Patten – Revised Concept

*will add to Revised Concept category once it’s added to the blog*

Preface

After furthering considering the ideas I laid out for the class this last week, I’ve decided to go with my first concept for my thesis project: an animated series pilot with an accompanying pitch deck.

To reiterate, I’ll be repurposing many of the resources (characters, environments, story concepts, setting, genre etc.) originally imagined for a feature film in the creation of a more manageable project. Likewise, given the open-endedness of a pilot in the hands of a studio as opposed to a close-ended feature film in which no input can be added, a series pilot likely has far more potential in future employment anyway; I can use this pilot as a vehicle to gain employment as an animator, learn the in’s and out’s of how an animation studio runs and functions, and within time take this knowledge to start my own. This is so much more practical than an idea of been riding on for years, to simply start an animation studio right out of college. The risk of failure is much less given a more rational approach to achieving this goal.

Look Development

I’d like to share a few still images I had been using to promote my feature film, RESISTOR, here below in order to give a bit more of an idea of the photorealistic look and feel I’ll be going with for my project:

Character Examples

Additionally, where characters are concerned, I’ll be using models I have bought from DAZ3D.com. To further showcase the realistic level of detail, here are examples of models I’ll be using (with different clothing):

As mentioned in class, the idea of going realistic as opposed to stylized like with a Pixar or Dreamworks animation comes from a desire to tell more mature and complex stories not meant for children. I want to make art films similar in approach to something from Kubrick or Coppola, and to me that realism strongly supports a more adult narrative.

Before moving on, I spent the entire summer working out a pipeline to bring these characters through a pipeline of design in Daz Studio, rigging for animation and motion capture in Maya, prepping clothes in Reallusion 3DXchange, and bringing each element into Unreal for production, being able to simply record an animation with mocap and apply it to each character. The great news is that I can still use this pipeline, so I’m very happy about that.

First Steps…

The first step will be writing a new script and really exploring who these characters are, and what this world of the future is really like. Some good news is that I already have my script for the feature, so I can either adapt it or start from scratch. I’m grateful more for the opportunity to do either, and am doing my best to look at the positives of going back to the drawing board, rather than focusing on what could have been.

I absolutely feel that I’ve made the best possible decision, and know that I haven’t wasted any time, money or energy, because most importantly I learned how I’d make a feature film entirely by myself, and that in and of itself is a skillset worth millions. I also look at all of this as one learning experience after another, and I know now that the only way to fail is to give up, and I haven’t come this far just to come this far.

For more of my work, check out my website at http://pattenanimation.com