After the last presentation with the Ivor’s team we had to rethink a few things, mainly our communication of the brief. We needed to make sure that there was a clear story being told with our characters if we were going to show this to an audience. As shown above, I needed to rethink the staging of the animation in order to help the story be told visually, it was essential that I worked alongside the brief in a closer way in order to make sure the points that were made were met. Therefore I added a beginning scene which showed the full suited character, introducing this part to the audience straight away. Therefore I decided to add a close up of the character’s flowers growing to bring the audience closer into the warmth of the flames. Another scene I added was the buyout hand dropping the flowers onto a pile so that the audience knows the journey of the flowers and it is clearly illustrates. By putting an eye watching over the flowers I carried on this narrative of a foreboding overarching hold on the creativity of a musician when going through a buyout. To illustrate that the character ripping away the flowers was the buyout I decided to have the hand melt into frame and form the word ‘Buy-out’ in the slime before it melded into the hand shape.
With these things taken into account and introduced into the narrative I have created the final piece after animating each clip in Procreate then putting them together with the audio on Premiere. When considering the audio, it was extremely important to us that we followed the theme of supporting young musicians, therefore I contacted someone I know who makes music and we found a piece which would work well with the visuals. The musician is Tom Dodkins and the piece is called ‘n87’ from a new unreleased EP. This was beneficial since it has opened up a dialogue with Tom where we know our styles work well together and we agree on the theme and aesthetics, therefore, in the future we know we now want to work on a personal project together.
Here is the final piece which I have created as an assimilation of my ideas and development throughout the project. Here are the links to my team members work on the stings: sting 1, sting 2 , sting 3.
This piece begins with introducing the suited character sitting in a surreal landscape with their fire burning.
By zooming into the character in this way it brings dimension to the animation and depth to the character. You feel the emotion and connection coming in closer in this more intimate way.
The flowers grow out of the flames, blooming from the end of the characters fingers in the warm glow of the characters fiery head. This is the musician creating their work.
The blue glow behind the characters adds a magical fairy-tale theme with the sparkles and dew drops. This adds a level of delicacy to the fire of the character. Such as in the next two shots.
By adding the word buyout written in the image the characterless hand gives the audience its role in the piece. By removing all sense of recognition of this character it emphasises the senseless nature of a buyout.
The buyout comes and rips away the musician’s creations without thought for how this might affect the musician.
The flowers are dropped onto a pile of them where they are watched over by the eye of the contract with its beam of control.
After the suited character loses the flowers they slump and their fire grows weaker since a contract agreement leaves the musician with. no long term benefits.
A fiery hand comes along and removes the flowers just dropped in the pile.
The camera zooms out and a group of fire characters have appeared together warm and glowing offering a helping hand and the musicians creation back. They carry the message of knowing your rights, they are like the green character but do not wear suits so their creativity in the form of the flames is not constrained. This is because they have broken free of the bonds of buyout contracts.
The suited character takes the outstretched hand and the green suit disintegrates as the fire glows brighter. The suited character has been set free by the support of a community.
With the fire burning brighter and a community behind them, this character is able to create more flowers and burns brighter and bigger.
The characters have become part of keeping music alive by offering help and being open to learning.