Plane Concept

It's a little rough as I didn't want to spend much time on it due to my dissertation priority so I only added a bit to it, but I thought I should try and finish it now whilst I remember. It still needs some more colour and cleaning up, but overall it's pretty much the final design of the plane.

House Designs and Background Thumbnails

These are my designs I made about a week ago, so that when I come to making the final backgrounds I know exactly what the buildings and their geometry will look like. The colours are just for reference when I will texture them.

House Designs

 

The colour for the small cake slice house will be different for each one in the village (e.g one will be pink for strawberry and another will be a soft yellow for lemon) as well as the doughnut windows and roofs. 

I also found it very hard to not add chocolate haha. Everytime I was designing a house I wanted or really needed some chocolate, either to add some colour or have something which is made out of chocolate. The closest I've come is the muffin, which is a coffee brown (but is not chocolate, just a dark sponge!)

Background Thumbnails

 

 A few of these thumbnails I won't be using, or will be using in a different shot (such as the one of the campfire, which is no longer in our film). And there are a few of the same backgrounds which I have tried with different angles. There are also a couple that are missing, which I will do once the animatic is completed so I can use it as reference so I know what background to have (this refers to the new shots we are adding).

The last picture is an overhead view of the entire village, which is really helpful in knowing where everything is and what house(s) would be in a particular background. I've also added where Ande and Mozbie walk in the village during the film. 

I have also created a 3D model of the village, which I made on a bus journey back home a week ago, again to help with camera angles and to get a better feel of the village and where everything is located. I will upload this soon.

EDIT

And here is the village in 3D. Please be aware it is very rough, with very basic polygons used.

EDIT

I just this minute realised I forgot to add the fencing around the one small cake slice house (I'm referring to the house in the third image near the middle, facing inwards at an angle) 

Update on backgrounds/New Schedule!

After realising mid-week that my dissertation draft hand-in is in just over 2 weeks, I have decided to halt progress on backgrounds. They are pretty much all finalized design wise anyway, and I figured that they don't actually need to be completely finished so early on in the production stages. Furthermore, as we have agreed that as we're working chronologically, it means we're starting from the beach scenes so it is just under 50 seconds in before we hit the village in our film. But because we need to completely finish at least 50% of the film, there will of course be a few scenes in the village which we need backgrounds for. So I will create those few in the days after my dissertation draft hand-in, which is on the 5th. I will give myself a maximum time of a week to create those 7-8 backgrounds, which will then give me 10 days to help with the rest of my team, making any inbetween animations, cleaning any up and editing it together and making a final render. Hopefully the animatic will be completely finished for today as well, which was the most important thing to be done as I will need it to know exactly what the backgrounds/camera angles are.

I know this is less time than I had already scheduled, but it's difficult for me to concentrate on the backgrounds when my head is always thinking about the dissertation, and I don't want to do a rush job on them. I've realised many other people/teams are doing the same thing, so it isn't like we're losing ground/time on others. The dissertation is important and I am really worrying about it, so from now up until 5th (unless I find any free time to work on backgrounds, which is admittingly a big if) I will be solely working on my dissertation.

 

This is my new schedule for Team Candy Island. I updated it for 2 reasons. One was so it was up to date with my re-scheduling of the backgrounds (due to dissertation) and two was because the previous schedule wasn't detailed enough on exactly what I would like done for each day.

Now, basically from now until the 5th I will be working just on my dissertation, which is the area marked in grey. I would expect Jayce and Jack to do the same, but of course if they decide to do anything else that is fine. Starting from the 7th, we will then properly begin production on our film and for the next 3 weeks animate and complete half of hour film. For one of those weeks I will be creating the backgrounds, whilst Jayce animates and hands his scenes to Jack to add any inbetween animation and to clean them up. In the second week I will then join Jack and be an inbetween animator, and may also animate myself any small shots which haven't been done. This will be the case for the whole of that week. Then into the final week, we will be hopefully finalizing animations and getting work together so we're all organised for Wednesday and Thursday. Ideally I would like all animation to be finished by Tuesday, but if it has to run over to Wednesday that isn't too big a deal. The reason why is because I want two days spare for us to edit the film and create the final render. As well as this, we will collect up all our work over the past few months (including all pre work) and put them onto discs. I know from experience that leaving work to be put together on the day of the hand-in is a very bad thing to do! Which is why I want everything finished by Thursday night. 

I think this is a good schedule and hopefully it's easy to understand. I've think I've set just about the right time for the work for everybody. I'm hoping we can get maybe a couple more people on board, and I'm slightly worried about who will be Colour Artist. I think for the hand-in on the 25th one of us will do the colouring, especially as we're not going to do any shading. But I think after that we will need someone to specifically do that.

Keeping Organised!

As I mentioned in the post before, it is now crucial to stay organised with my workflow and to know exactly which days I'll be doing what. This is the schedule I have made for me and my group for the next 10 weeks. It is slightly more for me though, as for example the days I have put down to work on my dissertation, Jayce and Jack won't have to do the same. Everything Candy Island related I want them to stick by, but any of the days for my dissertation they can choose to do work for Candy Island instead if they wish.

I have worked out, that by sticking exactly to this schedule, and working Monday-Friday 9-5, we have 96 hours to create a pre-vis film which must consist of at least 50% finished animation. And then in the last week before the deadline on the 25th, we have an extra 32 hours to complete any final animation, any last minute pre-production work, render the film out and then put it all onto discs. Looking at that, it isn't too bad. We certainly have enough time to do all that if we put our heads down and work hard, and it's excluding any extra hours we may have on days that I've put down for dissertation work. 

Making a schedule has really helped put everything into perspective and made it so much clearer with what we need to do and how much time we have to do so. It of course had to be made, as no team in the world can work without knowing and having a schedule. I will create a new schedule after the 10 weeks for one which will lead up to our final hand-in on the 17th May.

Being a Producer

Today I've began to kickstart my role as Producer. Now that we have been greenlit we're full steam ahead now on production. Whilst we're still going about finalizing our animatic, we've already began the final backgrounds and animation for our film. Because of this I really need to step up being a Producer and help to manage our team, keep ourselves organised and make sure we stick to schedules. Tomorrow I will be creating a timetable with all of the schedules I will set for each week, and we will keep referring to this as we work as it is very important we don't fall behind work-wise. By the 25th January we need to hand in our film with at least 50% finished animation, as well as all the finished Pre-Production work, so now is definitely the time to know exactly who is doing what and getting work done before my set deadlines.

As just a quick example, I just now tided up our dropbox as it was quite frankly a mess. So now everything is all in folders and re-arranged nicely so it'll be much easier to find things. This was quite crucial, as we break up from uni tomorrow and my team will be going back home for Christmas, so working at home will make Dropbox become our main hub of sharing work. We also need to make sure that everything we upload is named correctly, such as e.g opening_background

Brainstorming Lecture

Today we had our last lecture with Helen Brunsdon. She has been really great these last couple of months helping us with our films, and her thoughts and ideas have definitely had an effect on what we've done.

This morning's lecture had us brainstorming our animatics, but with a twist. We brainstormed someone else's animatics, and in this case my team looked at Tim Wheatley's Land and Power, and he looked at ours. Basically we had to watch each other's animatics with an open mind and write down any thoughts we had, anything we'd change or improve, anything we didn't understand, etc. This proved to be really, really helpful. Tim came up with some really great ideas and we've actually taken a few of them on board to put in our animatic. The session was definitely something we needed and was the final piece of the puzzle. We were happy with our previous animatic but felt something was missing; something needing to be changed. Now we really think we're there, and hopefully once we make the changes and add the new scenes we should have our final animatic.

The biggest change we're making is we are completely scrapping the war scene. I've actually been unsure about this for a while now as it didn't quite fit with everything else we had. So instead what we're doing is having Ande and Mozbie gradually getting fatter and fatter until they can't physically move, and will then be captured by the marshmallows. The marshmallows are going to be really cute and help feed Ande and Mozbie throughout (they still want to fatten them up to eat them), but Ande realises this halfway through and tries to escape. Mozbie on the other hand is completely oblivious to this and happily stuffs his face with sweets. He even has a chance to escape but being as dumb as he is, doesn't. What we learned from today's feedback was to concentrate more on the personalites of our characters more, and we're definitely going to show that in our film now. The other big-ish change is the hot tub is now going to fill up when the volcano erupts, rather than already be full. One thing that was questioned today was why do the marshmallows get excited by the erupting chocolate when they already have chocolate in the village. So we're going to remove anything chocolate-y from the village, so now it seems much more of a delicacy for the marshmallows. And once they capture Ande and Mozbie, instead of cooking them over a fire they will cook them in the hot tub and then eat them like a fondue. And the ending will be a photo of this, which will zoom out to reveal that it's among other photos of other pilots who have happened to crash on the island and be killed by the marshmallows. I think this is a much better ending than what we had before as it has more closure - plus I've always felt that the island and it's inhabitants are the main characters, and it's their story so to speak. While Ande and Mozbie are still important and are the characters we follow, we just happen to see what happens to them rather than any other pilots.

So we have quite a few changes to make to the animatic, nothing too major - but they do change the story slightly and I think improving it so much more in the process.

I'm still currently creating the backgrounds and have nearly finished thumbnailing them before creating them properly in illustrator, but now of course I have a few more to make.


Below are some of the notes I made from Tim's feedback, and also my team's own ideas when we had a group meeting after the lecture. They also show other ideas we will be doing which I haven't covered already:

With the above, Tim gave us the idea of having a Where's Wally thing going on where we have the two humping marshmallows shown a few times in the film, but they'll be hidden quite well so you can only see them if you really notice. It doesn't affect the story at all, but we thought it'd be a nice touch.
 

 

And this is just a simple list of what happens throughout the film. It's very rough but it's just to know exactly what happens and to have it on paper to see and evaluate. 

UPDATE

Incase you have trouble reading my notes from the photos, I have written them up in Word (plus it just makes things easier)

Update on today 04/12

Today was the first day back at uni after my few days of absence due to illness. I asked for a group meeting with Jayce and Jack as I felt one was really needed, mainly because I was a little confused with my exact role and what exactly was going on.

Thankfully it all went well and I am now content with everything. I had chosen to be Producer for this film, but I haven't really lived up to the role so far - which meant that all 3 of us sort of had the role. The meeting was a real kick up the butt for me, and one that was needed. I feel that even though there is only 3 of us, there still should be a person with the role of Producer. So I'm going to really knuckle down with my role, and help keep us organized so we all know what work we should be doing and when to do it for. I am going to create a timetable with what needs to be done before the hand-in just after Christmas, and we can keep referring to this to help us move along nicely.

As well as that, I am currently the background artist. By this Friday I aim to have finished thumbnails of every background, so that we know exactly what they will look like. And then next week I will create the finished versions in Illustrator. I had planned to have the backgrounds in 3D, using After Effects to create planes and have a layered 3D look, but for now we're not doing that as it will take time. As after I finish the backgrounds I'm going to be animating/inbetween animating shots. But today I was experimenting with Photoshop's vanishing point tool, which creates a 3D space in a 2D image. I'm not sure if it would work with our backgrounds though.

Update on what's happened recently

Unfortunately for the last 5 or so days I've been really ill with some sort of sickness bug, which prevented me from doing much work - this included going into Uni. So that's why I have been very quiet with my blogging, but yeah I'm better now and back on the work train :)

So, last Thursday my animatic for Candy Island was shown to Luis Cook, which was so he could help us with any feedback he had an give his thoughts and impressions. He really liked our animatic, and understood our characters Ande and Mozbie. But he felt the pace was off, and that we revealed too early that the marshmallows are evil. He liked the jokes but said that they should fit more naturally with the story and help to progess it. For example the scene where the marshmallow pees down the drainpipe (which we were unsure about anyway) didn't contribute towards anything, so we decided to remove it. Luis also helped us realise that the marshmallows should help Ande and Mozbie to eat, and do as much as they can to fill them up (before they decide to turn). We've taken that feedback on board and combined it with new vulgar scene ideas we thought of, and now the marshmallows contribute a lot more to the story rather than just be disgusting up until the battle charge.

The talk with Luis Cook really helped us to define the story and our ideas, and his thoughts have helped to make it so much better. After making changes to the animatic (this is now our 7th animatic) we are very happy with it and feel it is the final version, with maybe one or two small tweaks or things added in later on in production.

Running test for Mozbie

I have the task of animating Mozbie's run in Candy Island. As Mozbie is dim-witted and oblivious to everything, I wanted to give him a bit of a goofy run. Now, immediately my mind went straight to Edd's walk from Ed, Edd and Eddy. His animation, in my opinion, is the absolute pinacle of a funny run from a dumb character. It literally defies gravity because his legs are in front and his leg and arms are flailing from behind. I really wanted to use a similar animation for Mozbie, but I knew I shouldn't. So I've tried to make something different but still hopefully bizarre, and not your usual run.

As you can hopefully see, I think it looks okay. I think I'm on the right track to get it looking quite stupid - in a good way. I haven't really copied anything from Edd's run, other than maybe his head tilted back. It's a much more upright position. Actually, writing this now, it reminds me of Filch's run in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (mainly the legs). Infact, I think I will definitely use this walk as inspiration. It would really suit the character of Mozbie well, but just the arms will need to be more animated.

Background Experiment

This isn't a shot in our film, so ignore its roughness. I just wanted to experiment with camera movement and the planes, which I made to create a 3D space with depth. I think it looks quite nice, and a finished version would certainly be visually appealing.

VERY old maya work

I found this hidden amongst my maya files on my computer. Thought I'd share it with you all so I grabbed a screenshot. Please note, this is really old - like, years old haha. So my skills in maya were very poor. Enjoy! :)

Introducing........ Frog Dude! (yes, that is what I called him...)

As you can see, he is horrific. Although the lighting is okay! Got the flames reflecting off his eye, so that's somethin'! But yeah, otherwise, really really bad. *shudders*

Marshmallow run test

Just a test for the charge scene. Not necessarily the final animation, but I just wanted to experiment. I want the run to be quite cute, with a little hop in it. Because a running marshmallow, albeit with a spear, isn't very deadly. And whilst they are evil little beings, they're still cute. So I wanted to incorporate that in their run.

I think it looks okay, I can certainly experiment more with speed and smoothness, maybe add more of a squish into the run. But it's probably the general jist of what I will go for.

 

 

 

 

EDIT

 

Here is what I'm hoping is an improved walk. It's shorter because I removed a section of the previous walk, but basically I moved the marshmallow further right for each frame, and also removed a few inbetween frames to make it look more like a run, rather than before where to me it looked like side steps.

 

Animatic Draft 2 Feedback

Better late than never I suppose! I've just been busy working on my dissertation these last few days so I haven't touched the internet (didn't want any distractions!)

But yeah, last Thursday we showed our second animatic to Helen and Derek. We had made quite a few changes from the first draft, including completely making a new beginning (all of this is mentioned in a post below, I think)

Feedback was fairly good, but also unexpected. They both felt it just needed to be more crazy. More weird. The marshmallows need to be vulgar, disgusting, twisted little blighters! We were being quite timid with our marshmallow characters beforehand, only hinting at what they actually are, for 2 reasons really. 1.) I think we were just unsure about how we wanted these marshmallows to be. 2.) I don't think we wanted to go over the top with them, because we were not sure if we could get away with them being so disgusting haha.  But after the feedback, we've agreed to go mental with them. At the end of the day, they're marshmallows! We could get away with so much, and looking back I really don't think we took advantage of the huge potential they give us for weird and crazy things. So expect a different film in tone from anything I've mentioned before...and, just as a teaser, look out for the marshmallow 'lovin' in the hot chocolate tub!

We also needed to go over-the-top with the setting and the backgrounds, which I immediately agreed with once they gave their reasons. In a world with living marshmallows, again I think we were playing it safe with the backgrounds. We want to stick to the same sort of design and layouts, but again just go over-the-top with them - mainly just with the colour. They needed to look nommy, as if you want to eat them. But we didn't want any of the backgrounds or background objects to be sweets, as that would completely screw-up our story (as otherwise Ande and Mozbie could just eat the trees or the sand!). So we are still having a normal volcano, albeit a living one, with normal trees, normal sea, etc - it's just the colours we're going wacky with. Jayce showed them a concept he did a while ago where he used textures for the sea and sky (this was different to what we were originally planning to do), and Helen and Derek loved it. So we decided to go down that route instead, and here is an example of one of the background test shots Jayce made recently:

I think it looks really great, especially the sky - it looks tasty haha, and much more than just a simple background now. Originally we didn't want the backgrounds to overpower the animation and the characters, we just wanted them to simply be, well, backgrounds. But now they're so much more I think. I'm so glad we decided to change the backgrounds, as at the end of the day the island in itself is a character - the title of our film is 'Candy Island'! So it would have been wrong to have simple backgrounds. Derek actually came up with a really great idea that the Island could be like a Birthday cake, with all the layers (Sponge, Jam, Cream, Etc.) visible on the outside. And there could be a river running down to the sea, just to add something else to the island. But I'm not sure if we are doing this yet though.

Other feedback was that it needed a little tightening up, which again I agree with. As much as we now want this to be weird and vulgar, story is key and that should always come first. So the story is still the same, but we're just evaluating every scene and seeing if it helps towards the story. At the moment the shot of the marshmallow peeing down the drain pipe is being considered to be thrown away, if we really don't think it's necessary.

On Tuesday we have to hand in our final animatics, so they can be put together in a showreel to show Luis Cook who will decide which ones should go through to be made. He will not have seen any of our pre-production work, literally the first he will see of our work is the animatic - which is a very scary thought, as he has to understand the story and know what happens just from our animatic. I suppose this is fair though, as a good animatic has to get the story across and show exactly what happens.

My Job Roles/Our Progress So Far

 My Job Roles

I am the Producer and Assistant Director of Candy Island, so it is my job to manage people and time. I need to make sure that everyone in the team knows exactly what they are doing, and they stick to any deadlines I give them. I will be the line of communication between everyone, and will have full overview and responsibility for the project from a creative and scheduling perspective.

I will also be an Animator for Candy Island,  as well as the 3D Background Artist (if we do go ahead with that idea, I need to have a meeting with Jayce). In the post stages I have the roles of Compositor (regarding 3D backgrounds) and Editor.


Progress

We've just finished the second draft of the animatic, it's looking so much better now. Our main criticisms from the first (not enough going on in the backgrounds, village needing to be populated more, more structure needed and the sense that the marshmallows are preparing to kill Ande and Mzbie) have been fixed. There is definitely more of a story now, but we've still kept the whackiness and weirdness from before. We still want to stick by our guns and make something unique and strange, not sticking too much to the guidelines of a typical slapstick animation, but felt that some changes were definitely needed.

We have to show the animatic tomorrow, so at the moment we can't really do a great deal until we get feedback. I'm very pleased with the animatic, although I think that we need more chocolate on the floor in the end shots.

Things to do by next Friday as it's the sweatbox hand-in (the things in bold orange are what I need to do):

- Add more chocolate in the last few shots of the animatic
- Make any other changes in the animatic (if necessary)
- Edit the script and make it final (once we've settled on the animatic)
- Animation tests of shots we are using (I will be animating Mozbie's walk soon)
- Concept drawing of the plane
- Character Turnarounds
- Finalize the sound so we know exactly what we're using for music and effects
- Any other final designs to add to the sweatbox (if necessary)

(These don't need to be done for next week but we can start on them)

- Tests of the 3D backgrounds (if we do decide on this)
- Possibly a final render of a small shot with completed animation and backgrounds (just so we can see the exact look we're going for)

Meeting with Andy/New thoughts and ideas

I just had a chat with Andy about what my plans are for the future and what goals I have, both then and during my remaining time at University. It really made me see clearly what I should be doing. As it is 3D which I want to go in, I should probably use 3D within my project Candy Island. His idea was that we should have 3D backgrounds, but not in the normal sense. Rather to use the plane effect, by building the backgrounds in Maya and using the paintings of them over the top. So it will still look 2D in the finished product, but have that sense of depth from the 3D.

Very similar to the backgrounds for this game, which Andy showed me. Very beautiful and very pleasing to the eye, it's much more interesting to look at than just a simple 2D background - or even a standard 3D one:

This is the sort of look that I think we should go for. I think it would make the backgrounds much more interesting, and it also gives me the chance to create some 3D for my project. Me and Andy both agreed that games are having to change their aesthetic look and feel to remain interesting. The likes of an indie game such as Tengami or a big budget console game like Borderlands 2 are changing the ways games look, and are making the games of old with their 'realistic' graphics looking rather boring.

I need to fully know what I want to do once I finish Uni. At the moment I'm a little confused as exactly what path I want to go down, as I've literally done a bit of everything on my course and haven't really focussed on one particular skill. 3D is what I've always wanted to do, to model characters and landscapes, and possibly learn to rig as well. I still want to do this now, and whilst I haven't really done much of it so far, now is my chance to really get going.

We had to write a statement of intent a few weeks ago to give to our lecturers so they can get a better understanding of what we want to do. One of the questions was "What is your career aim". I wrote that my main aim is to be a 3D modeller, but I also said that I enjoy animating in 2D and feel that I'm quite capable of doing so and would consider doing more in the future. Furthermore I stated script-writing and storyboarding were two things I felt I was strong in, as well as editing. As you can see, there is quite a bit of variety in all of those things and I do really need to settle one just one or two of them, and put myself out there in the future as a 'modeller' or '2D animator', as two examples.

Marshmallow Skip Test

This will be one of the marshmallows in the background, in one of the shots when we're in the village. It's a little rough, as it's only for the animatic. I think it's actually only the second time I've ever animated a skip, the first being when we had to make one in the first few weeks of the first year! In the final film there will be 4 or 5 extra frames in there, just to make it a little smoother and free-flowing. Overall though I think it looks okay.

Better 3D model of the Marshmallow Village

I re-made the village in maya using Jayce's plan below, so we can get a good sense of where everything is. This will also help for us to plan our shots and angles, as we would like some diverse shots in our film (but not too many as to differentiate from the typical slapstick and its rather simple shots).

Also I just wanted to do something in Maya, as I plan to get into modelling once I graduate uni. I just didn't think my skills are quite up to scratch just yet to make anything major in 3D.

So here's the rough plan:

And these are quick renders of the village (just thought I'd add some simple lighting and shading to jazz it up a little haha) They're still quite rough, so there isn't much detail at all in the village. It's literally just to know where everything is:

Rough 3D Island

Just to help us with the angles of shots. It isn't finished yet. (note: the hovering houses haha)

Crew Sheet and Time Table

These need updating but just wanted to show the basis of how we're working with timetables.

What I need to do by 21st November

- Create the 2 tables (done)
- Mozbie walk test animation (in progress)
- Concept design of the plane (in progress)
- Update the script
- Watch slapstick animations to research camera angles
- Finalize camera angles

I'm also Script Editor for another project called Hook, Line and Stinker which I will need to do within this time, and I might be working on another project's script and possibly more.

Job roles and what needs doing

So we've now got Jack working with us on our film now. He's currently designing the layouts and will also be an inbetween animator. I think we also have Sam on board, who will be animating inbetweens as well. We've asked Kirsty to design the backgrounds using Jack's layouts and our animatic, so hopefully they will be done soon as backgrounds are our main concern right now!

We've also got someone lined up to do the colouring and shading for later in the production stages, but we need to develop a colour pallette for them to work off, and we'd like a concept painter to create the final shot at the end in a very detailed, grotesque manner - similar to the close up shots found in Spongebob Squarepants.

So here are the roles so far (not necessarily finalized)

Director: Me or Jayce                              -
Assistant Director: Me or Jayce              - (these 3 will be finalized asap)
Producer: Me or Jayce                             -
Designer: Jayce
Art Director: Jayce
Layout Artists: Me and Jack
Colour Stylist: TBC
Background Designer/Painter: Kirsty and possibly someone else
Script Writer: Me
Storyboard Artist: Jayce
Storyboard Assistant: Me
Key Animator: Jayce (and possibly me)
Animator: Me
Key clean up Artist: Me
Inbetweeners: Jack and Sam (I need to confirm this)
Editor: Me

And this is what needs to be done

- Create 2 tables, one of the team explaining peoples roles and what they need to do as well as contact details. The other will show deadlines for work each week, with anyone able to edit it showing if they have done it, haven't done it or in the process of doing it using a red, amber, green system (I am doing this now)
- Second draft of the animatic (adding in all the changes I've listed in the post below - this is Jayce's job)
- Test Shots (I'm doing a test shot of Mozbie's walk, trying to get that finalized)
- Concept design of the plane (which I will be doing)
- Update the script (I will do this)
- Complete the layouts (Jack's job)
- Finalize camera angles (my job as well)
- Background designs need to be completed (these haven't been started yet)
- Finalize the colour palette (yet to be done)
- Finalize the music and sound effects (in progress)

Animatic feedback and new ideas

We managed to finish the animatic for today, which we showed to our class and Helen. Got some good feedback but also quite a lot of changes which are needed. After watching it myself I immediately saw some flaws and scenes and shots which need to be edited or added in, so I did agree that it wasn't perfect. Plus no one gets the animatic right first time - there always ends up being many many drafts.

So basically the main criticism was that it needs more structure, and that the audience needs to know early on that the marshmallows plan to eat our main characters Ande and Mozbie. I absolutely agreed with this straight away, as after seeing the animatic a few times myself it was something that stood out to me that it was quite sudden when the marshmallows suddenly attack. So we plan to have glimpses where a marshmallow tries to eat one of the pilots or we see at the beginning the marshmallows are up to something. There were also a few other shots which needed slowing down or edited as well, which was of our own thoughts.

What was also questioned was that the village isn't that well populated, yet there is a full army which appears later on in the film. This is something which we couldn't yet show in the animatic though because we haven't settled on backgrounds designs yet, which I will come back to later.

So at moment we plan to add the changes given to us by Helen, as well as the feedback from other course mates and our own ideas, which are listed below:

- When Ande and Mozbie are sliding down the roof, rather than having them revealed that they're fat at the end, we will gradually make them get bigger as they slide and then bounce off the floor.

- The plane crash scene needs to be clearer (we had a thought that we see the plane actually crash through a telescope or binoculars, which is being held from a marshmallow. But we don't see them, only a snigger/laughter to highlight that someone is watching them)

- We need to colour the cola bottle to make it clearer it's a sweet and not a drink

- Colour Ande and Mozbie in their colours so it's much easier to differentiate between the two


Our own ideas which we need to add into the animatic

- Speed up the beginning scenes so there's less time to wait for the first gag (when we are establishing the characters and their hungry situation we going to make it faster , and gradually ease into the gags to give them that much more punch)

- More chocolate needs to land on the marshmallows when the volcano erupts

- The shot of Ande and Mozbie fat needs to be held for longer (after they bounce off the floor)

- Change the ending shots as the camera angle is too simple (possibly a POV shot when they're being thrown onto the fire, and the marshmallows could terrorise them and chew on them)

- More background gags (bouncy castle, ferris wheel, clues as to the marshmallows being meat eaters, etc - we're developing ideas at the moment)

- Develop camera angles

- Backgrounds need to be finished

- Work on timing (fat scene , war line up establishment, fire throwing scene)

As for the music we don't want it to over power the sound effects so we may see if we can use the sound track we had for the animatic, because it does everything we want it to. We recorded the sound effects ourselves, and we're not sure whether to stick with that or go for proper sound effects - but we don't want it to lose that naturalistic effect, if that makes sense. Voices and recorded sounds rather than just sounds downloaded from the internet.

Other ideas: 

Licking lathering marsh when it rains chocolate, marsh walking like a dog over to chocolate sniffing and he licks another's butt shiny and sticking far out, pov shot from chocolate dollop flying towards ground marsh getting ready to eat and it completely covers him in chocolate, toys in the house of bondage, when Mozbie looks at bondage marsh caught in the act back an forth shots, then mozbie continues eating the door because he doesn't care, liqourice house.

Sounds

In order

Sounds

- Ande rising (slide whistle

- Mozbie rising (slide whistle

- Stomach growl (car splutter, dying engine

- Ande squinting (telescope, eagle?

- Ande surprise

- Baby marsh skip [something cuter than squeaky dog, or just a higher pitch? Chipmunk-ish]

- Baby marsh skip noise (high pitch whoosh)

- Baby marsh turning around? (quick whoosh, the noise those watches make with the rotating dial thing on the outside)

- Ande angry (dog growl

- Mozbie confused (phone noise you mentioned

- Ande/Mozbie run (bullet firing, car engine

- Volcano straining

- Volcano fart

- Screeching halt (car braking

- ooooo/aaaaaa sparkly noise [reveal noise when looking at village] (wand sparkle

- Butler jump (another whoosh?

- Gesture noise? [suave]

- Manic run/noise [zombie/crazy noise]

- Ripping off door

- Gulping

- Pop back to normal shape [stretching pop noise]

- Slurp

- Stretch bottle

- Chew

- Burp [animal noise]

- Patting lips

- Whistle

- Slide (finger running on glass,

- Lick

- Shivering

- Excitement (camera shutter,

- Jump [kangeroo 'boing' jump]

- Balloon/bubble noise

- Battle cry/ Screaming noise

- When marshmallow jumps and swears

- Piercing noise

- Balloon burst

- Marshmallow skewer

- Flop noise

- Hot choc splash

- Scraping

- Eruption (flushing toilet,

- Content

- Falling/whooshing noise

- Drop noise

- Rolling/pleasure

- Sigh of relief

- Thrown in fire noise? (sheep, mama

- Scared (whimpering dog, baby mobile (in cots)

- Confused

- Marshmallow walk (squeaky dog toy

- Carrying A/M on poles (ruler flapping,

Other sound effects we could use: Donkey, Elephant, Pig squeel, Smashing glass/crockery, boxing bell ring (just before marshmallows charge?) fart noise, flipping coin

Final Script

This is the script which I have typed up. Obviously it isn't properly formatted as I have just pasted it into here. And it might need a few tweaks and I need to add the SFX, but this is practically the finished thing.

Candy Island

Screenplay by:

Jayce Cowley Liminton and Perry Hall

TITLE

EXT. ISLAND FULL - DAY

A beautiful island sits in the ocean, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, with a huge volcano planted in the centre.

CUT TO

EXT. PLANE WRECKAGE

A crashed plane is dug deep into the sand of the Island's beach, smoke coming out from the engine. Two figures rise from the wreckage one after the other, who are the pilots of the wrecked plane. They are Ande and Mozbie. Ande is blue green in colour, with a purple scarf. He is somewhat the leader of the two, the one with the brains - but can also have incredibly bad luck. Mozbie, on the other hand, is red in colour, with an orange scarf. He is dim-witted, simple minded and oblivious to any situation. The pilots look around to see where they are, and then look at each other in confusion. Ande's stomach growls and he holds his stomach, realising that he is very hungry. Mozbie sees this and does the same, unsure what is going on but thinking he should be holding his stomach as well.

CUT TO

EXT. BEACH/FOREST EDGE

Ande looks around further, his eyes narrow and sharp. Suddenly they widen as baby marsh, a small marshmallow creature, comes towards him skipping around a flump. It goes right past him and head towards the forest. Just before it reaches the forest edge, baby marsh turns around, blows a raspberry and gives the two fingers v sign to Ande, and then turns around and walks into the tree-line.

BACK TO THE BEACH

Ande is angered by this, whilst Mozbie has no clue what is going on. Mozbie glances at Ande and, after seeing his angry expression, mimics him after deciding he should probably be annoyed as well. Ande runs after baby marsh, with Mozbie in pursuit. Off in the distance, the volcano suddenly farts, its face straining as if trying to hold something in.

CUT TO

EXT. FOREST EDGE/MARSHMALLOW VILLAGE

After having ran through the forest, they come to a screeching halt as they see what lies in front of them - a small village made entirely of candy. There are houses with candy cane roofs, curly wurly drains and wafer biscuit doors, hot tubs filled with hot chocolate, a ferris wheel, see-saws, bouncy castles - and then the denizens themselves, who are marshmallows! One particular marshmallow is standing right in front of Ande and Mozbie, standing on a podium. This is the butler marshmallow, with a sleek moustache and black bow tie, who when jumps down to the floor makes a noticable sound similar to a squeaky dog toy. He gestures for Ande and Mozbie to follow him through the village.

EXT. VILLAGE CENTRE

Walking through the village, Ande's and Mozbie's stomachs get the better of them and they run manically to feast upon all the candy. Mozbie rips a wafer door off a house and shoves it all in his mouth in one gulp, taking the shape of the biscuit. Once he digests it, he picks up a cola bottle from the floor and goes to drink it, but realises it is in fact a sweet after trying to open and slurp from it. He chews it instead, and burps soon after, feeling satisfied. Ande is seen walking away from a house patting his lips with a napkin and whistling casually, having eaten something he probably shouldn't have. He then slides underneath a drain pipe and eagerly waits for the sauce to drip into his mouth, shivering every time it does so. Mozbie then walks past him and climbs up a house onto the roof, which Ande does as well. They both look at each other, excitement in their eyes, and then run, jump and slide down the side of the house with their mouths open wide, taking in huge gulps of everything before them.

We zoom out to reveal that Ande and Mozbie are now huge and round from all the eating, nearly the size of hot air balloons, with their arms and legs barely visible due to the sheer fatness of their bellies. They are surrounded by War Marshmallows, who charge from all sides towards Ande and Mozbie after one of them screams a battle cry. They pierce through the two pilots, who fly off like a released balloon into the sky, but also skewer each other with their spears. Ande falls on top of a post box whilst Mozbie lands in the hot chocolate tub, both as flat as a pancake. More marshmallows then appear around the duo, who go to capture them. This had been their plan all along, they just needed to fatten them up.

CUT TO

EXT. CAMPFIRE

Tied to a stick by their hands and feet, and their bottoms scraping across the floor, Ande and Mozbie are carried by the marshmallows to a campfire. Ande has a very worried look on his face, whilst Mozbie, as always, has no idea what is happening.

CUT TO

EXT. VOLCANO

The volcano, now making a face as if it's in excruciating pain, suddenly erupts chocolate furiously all over the village. It's face soon changes to being very content and pleased.

CUT TO

EXT. BACK TO CAMPFIRE

Chocolate rains down from the skies, landing on the marshmallows. Ande and Mozbie are immediately dropped onto the floor as the marshmallows dance and scream in happiness at what has just occurred. One marshmallow rolls around in the chocolate and lathers itself in it, looking rather pleasured. Ande looks very happy and blows a sigh of relief, thinking that they will be okay. But they are soon picked up again, and thrown onto the fire to be cooked.

CREDITS START

FADE IN FROM BLACK

EXT. TABLE

Ande and Mozbie are now lying cooked on a huge table, with the marshmallows sitting around it prepared to feast on them.

CREDITS END