Plan of Action

However many times i say to myself i need to get my organisation and time skills sorted, it never happens. So here i am with 2, and a bit days till my work is due, well technically 1 and a bit as its due Friday, and i am in a major panic.

So the plan of action for today - including this evening, and an all nighter if i have to, consists of:

• Completing all my flash stuff, including speech bubbles and text
• Music for my flash 
• Possibly my Research and development file, but i may leave this till Thursday
• DVD menu and cover.

And possibly more, but i cannot think of any at the moment.

Lack of updates

Apologies for the lack of updates, but i have currently been drawing for the past few days and getting the last little bits of my animation done, and the fine details here and there, so i will update properly once i get back up to Lincoln, which is tuesday :)

Progress...

Okay, so its been a while since i posted, but i have presentations tomorrow, so i thought this was due an update.

I have been majorly busy with my dissertation and my other module that this project kind of had to go on the back. Since my last presentation, i have drawn a few more pictures, and there are more in the works, they just need finalising, but i have the establishing shots and the end shots, it is just a case of getting the pictures done for the main part of the story.

I have had computer problems over the past few days, generally running slowly and it was also infected with a Trojan virus which meant that i spent hours fixing my laptop, instead of drawing pictures, so i am slightly behind. But i feel that if i pick up the pace this week, and obviously throughout the Easter break that i will definitely be on target.

I am having issues with the software, but this is mainly because i have only had one quick tutorial on the basics and that is it, so i need to get books out of the library so if i get stuck like i have been tonight i can sort it out myself. The issues that i am having at the moment are attaching the pictures that i have to the comic book 'tween' and i have attempted so many times to get it right and it just isn't working, which is annoying as i did want to show some progress in the presentations.

I have been consulting with a friend on an Audio course on what the best course of action music wise is, whether to make my own, or buy a royalty and copyright free song and then edit it.

The plan for this week is to complete all of my pictures that i need, work out how to use flash, and by the end of the Easter break i would like it all to be completed.

Below are the three that i have done recently, one of them took my about 1 and half, 2 hours to do, due to the fact i had to draw the train and the girl first then draw them together on another sheet of paper.

 

In between these two boxes i would like to have a picture of the girls back viewing the carriage as this will be the first time that the two meet.

 I felt that a gun was more up to date in a sense than poisoning as it is mentioned in the news a lot more.

In total i have 10 photos, i would like to do at least 10 more, maybe even more than that, but i do believe that i should be able to get all of the drawings done by this weekend.

Progress

I currently have 7 'boxes' drawn and scanned into my computer ready to be photoshopped before putting into after effects.

Having just finished one of the boxes for the comic strip i now know how long it will take me to complete the others, the one i have done is one of the more basic ones, yet it still took me about an hour and a half to do, so if i give myself one day to complete the photoshop on the ones i have scanned in, i will need another two days to complete the drawings and then photoshop them.

Below is the first box that i have photoshopped, it is infact the las box of the comic strip.

Plan of action for this week;

1. Finish drawing all the 'boxes'
2. Photoshop as many of the boxes as i can
3. Tidy up the paperwork

Progress Report

After a meeting with my tutor two weeks ago, we decided on the 'interactive' comic. It would not infact be interactive, but it is the easiest way to describe it. The comic boxes will come onto the screen, obivously in the correct order. Though i have been ill recently, and had family stuff to worry about, i am hopefully still on the right track, eventhough i may be behind in comparison to my peers.

I have spent the last two days trying to draw my comic, only to realise that i cannot draw anime that small no matter how hard i try. After speaking to my housemate, i have decided to draw each 'box' as it were on an A4 sheet and then scale it down in photoshop, it will also look better quality if i do it this way. So far i have 4 photos for later on in the comic and have just started with the first few, i have a school scene which is the eastablishing shot.

I have decided that the story for my visual novel as it were, is loosely based on Willam Shakespeare's Romeo and Julliet. The idea is that a girl meets a boy from a rival high school and falls in love with him, knowing that her peers see this as a forbidden thing. Someone finds out about their relationship and tells everyone from both schools, resulting in them feeling like outcasts. They decide something drastic needs to be done, and they both take a suicide pact, he drinks the poison, but she cannot got through with it, he dies in her arms and the last shot or 'box' is off her with her eyes closed and tears falling down her face.

Things to do this week - Week 5

This week i need to establish a strong story and set about doing my story boards, i also need to decide if i want to go down the interactive comic route or the anime short, and which would work best with my idea's. I also need to look at tutorials on how to use flash and illustrator and whether or not i should use them or just stick to photoshop and after effects.

I need to scale down my concept art and see how it could fit into my story, as well as maybe drawing new pictures, and start to get the concept rolling.

So by the end of this week, i would like:

• A strong story
• Storyboards
• More concept art
• Completed tutorials
• Better direction on which route to take regarding my animation.

Most famous love stories

Eventhough i had a basic idea of what i wanted the story to be, i felt i needed to look up some historic love stories as well as some classic ones.

Below are the most famous ones:

1. Romeo & Juliet ( I would be interested in doing this one, as i love the story, but think that it is slightly over done in the media)
2. Cleopatra & Mark Anthony ( I am also interested in adapting this story aswell)
3. Lancelot & Guinevere
4. Tristan & Isolde 
5. Paris & Helena
6. Orpheus & Eurydice
7. Napoleon & Josephine
8. Odysseus & Penelope
9. Paolo & Francesca
10. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler  
11. Jane Eyre and Rochester
12. Layla and Majnun
13. Eloise and Abelard
14. Pyramus and Thisbe
15. Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy
16. Salim and Anarkali
17. Pocahontas and John Smith
18. Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal
19. Marie and Pierre Curie
20. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert       

 http://amolife.com/reviews/top-20-most-famous-love-stories-in-history-and-literature.html
 

 
 

Story

The idea for my second project is still a manga short, though i am slightly turning towards doing it in the style of a comic, and each part of the comic comes in one after the other, but again this is another idea, i am still sticking with the manga element of it.

The story that i would like to use for my manga short is your general love story.

A girl meets a boy at school but does not know how to approach him, the next day she starts to work up the courage to talk to him, and by the end of the day, they have decided that they will go on a date. They choose to go to the park for the date, and get on well, and kiss. A few days later the boy decides that he likes someone else, and leaves the girl, the short ends with her head drooped and tears falling from her face.

Shojo Manga

The popular themes in Shojo Manga are; romance, school, magic, costume drama, and comedy. Shojo are fully of symbolism - otherwise inanimate objects taking on special significance, as symbols or metaphors for something other than what they actually are. For example falling leaves, breath on glass, the ticking of a clock, falling flowers or hearts, or even the weather are all methods used by artists to give a scene a particular mood..


But not all romance,emotional and beautiful manga must always be shoujo.

Sailor moon is a well known shojo manga, where as examples like Love Hina and Ah! My Goddess are mistaken for shojo manga because they feature female characters prominently and/or feature romantic relationships. Most can be enjoyed by girls and women, as well, but the original intended audience is male. If the leading male is an unremarkable Average Joe (e.g., Oh, My Goddess, , Love Hina, etc), then you can be pretty sure it's not shojo manga. In shojo manga, the heroine is often an "ordinary girl," but the leading man must be tall, handsome, and cool. 

New Semester, New Ideas

So the idea for this semester is something that I have wanted to do since my second year. I would like to create a manga short. I already have some conceptual drawings of the style i would like, and maybe even use these as a basis for when i draw them in illustrator and flash.

Finished Project

So i have finally finished my animation :D, the only thing left is the evaluation and the RnD file.
Below is the finished product - minus the music as this was put on when creating the dvd in DVD studio pro.

Been a while..

So its been a while since i posted, this is due to other commitments like work, and my dissertation. As well as other factors as After Effects being extremely annoying and not working properly, but im happy to say i am finally getting somewhere :)

I just have the arrows to do and a little bit of last minute tweaking i think.

But i am hoping to have it done by this week.

To do list:
Arrows
Credits
Title
Research and Development File
DVD Menu
DVD

i think thats all lol