On our fourth week, my group made a start on some concepts for our animated short film. We had discussed and roughly agreed on a story so now we each focused on designing characters that would feature in the film, and showcase these characters to each other. I made some concepts for the shark design based on Bruce from ‘Finding Nemo’. I chose this character as inspiration because in the pixar film, he is initially friendly but is set off on a rampage as soon as he gets the scent of blood. In the film we see his pupils get dilated. I have an idea that I want to show in my storyboard. Once the shark has eaten the swordfish, the puffer fish waves at him but he gets her scent and I want to have a close up shot of the shark’s eyes as they get fully dilated, hopefully showing the audience what the conclusion of the story is and how it will end for the puffer fish.
image credits: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/572697/jaws-finding-nemo-sharks-shared-universe-fan-theory
https://pixers.uk/posters/cartoon-shark-side-view-51003553
Aside from group work, this week we also had a tutorial with Alec on Maya. This tutorial was all about getting familiarized with animating on Maya again. Alec had sent us a file of a ball and a wall. Our aim was to animate the ball bouncing into the wall and back onto the ground again. While animating this we also applied squash and stretch to add some realistic elements to it. I enjoyed this tutorial and feel like I have a good understanding of squash and stretch. I enjoyed using the animating tools on Maya.