Basil

I've had another idea.

I'm going to take a sound clip from the sitcom Fawlty Towers and animate the character of Basil Fawlty to the dialogue. He's such a caricature of a man, it's amazing nobody's yet converted his manic character into the cartoon medium.

Here are some rough tests to get to grips with the character. I tried to replicate his face in detail first, in order to fully understand how his eyes look how his eyebrows sit and the relationship between his mouth and his moustache (nonetheless enhancing his distinguishing features), before simplifying it and going straight into a draft run of a piece of character animation.

I imagined a generic Basil scenario: he's in the middle of a stressful situation, and is furiously looking for something - or someone, probably Manuel - but then he notices a resident of the hotel, and has to immediately adopt a jovial facade. The video sweeps by in a couple of seconds, and I've only dwelt on the face, but it's a start.

I'm really looking forward to animating this man.

Working Title: 'The Wall'

I have an idea for a short film, the production of which I shall incorporate into my showreel. I'm not committing myself to completing it by the end of this year, but whatever I complete will be valuable material.
The idea itself belongs to Estelle Sharpe, but she comes up with original ideas for films with such alarming rapidity she doesn't mind me using it.

It's about a kingdom of people building a large wall, to protect themselves from an impending invasion. Work is coming along nicely, when the king arrives. Initially imposing and authoritative, he immediately reveals himself to be very childish and overly-enthusiastic about something of which he has very little knowledge or ability. He tries to assist in the wall-building process, but his large frame and inherent stupidity only serves to hinder their progress (with suitably slapstick results). His subjects revolt in frustration, and put him in stocks (complete with additional iron ball on a chain), where he is to stay until the wall is completed.

Progress on the wall improves and morale in the kingdom is at a high, until a worker drops a hammer while passing the king in his stocks. The king, still eager to help, breaks free from the stocks' foundations (still encased in the main section), retrieves the hammer, and in the process of turning round to find the worker, swings his iron ball in a massive sideways arc...

...straight into the wall.

Through the debris, a crowd of enemy soldiers can be seen on the horizon. The workers look despondent.

Showreel Research

Of course, if I'm going to make a showreel, it'd be wise to check out other people's, to observe standard practices parameters. So I did.

An interesting showreel I found was on the personal website of animator Mark Mason. Instead of compiling all his work into one video, Mark has used the playlist feature of YouTube to allow people to scroll through his work, split up into bite-size chunks.



Perhaps Mark has another, singular video for giving to prospective employers in person, encouraging them to visit his website for this more in-depth, albeit YouTube dependant, showreel. He clearly has a wealth of experience and work to show people, and so the playlist method, while unorthodox, works well in this context. However, my limited arsenal of past projects would make compiling a showreel like this pointless, and I prefer the idea of a single video that does everything a showreel should do.

Another showreel I liked is that of Guilherme Ferreirinha, who uses a retro aesthetic to make his showreel visually appealing. The action happens in time to the music, which helps general flow, and it's just generally nice to look at. The information (in this case, just his website) is displayed concisely at the very end. It's inspired me to make a showreel that flows nicely. I like things to look retro, so I'll definitely take something of Ferreirinha's away in regards to aesthetic.

Another project, another blog!

Hello.

This blog is where I will be documenting the production process of a demo reel I will be creating for the second term of my second year of university.

Here is my proposal!

Proposal 2nd Year by WillWivell