Group Production: development of ideas and the pitch.

During the pre-production stages of the project I started sketching characters to be used in our final production. The group decided on using animals as characters because it creates a more lighthearted and entertaining feel to the interviews we were lip syncing. Using animals also gives us the opportunity to relate the speech in the interviews and sound of the voice to a type of animal.
Together we discussed possible ideas and ended up deciding on animating a dolphin, aliens, fascist ants, rhino builder, polaroid camera, goldfish and a dung beetle. All the characters appearances relate to what is being said on the tapes. I decided to concentrate my character design and story-boarding on the dolphin scene. I mainly practiced drawing the shape of a dolphin and trying to understand how a dolphin moves. I began generating different ideas for the storyboard. Because the idea was similar to creature comforts i wanted to include more shots than just the typical mid shot I decided that I would include a wrestling match between a shark and a dolphin to make it more interesting and give myself a challenge. I wanted a referee character so decided on a penguin because of the appearance. I practiced drawing the movements of all the characters in preparation for production because it would be my role to animate the lip sync and movements of other characters including a killer whale jump.
After watching the making of PIXARS 'Finding Nemo' i realized how complicated making something look underwater was so began researching into underwater backgrounds and lighting. One of the biggest challenges for me in this project will be working in 2D and trying to achieve a believable animation that will make the audience laugh.