Film and TV collaboration

This collaboration is pretty different from the first Film and TV collaboration since this time we are working with MA students on their final year film. I feel like this project is more like working with a client rather than a collaborative group project.
After hearing all the film students pitches i was struck by a film called "Lemuria" by Veronika Koubova. She wanted an array of stop motion scenes for her film and I jumped at the chance as I feel that stop motion is my strongest medium to work in.
Luckily I was chosen for the project and began discussing with Veronika what she wanted. basically she was looking for an under water scene that would be super imposed onto live action of a puddle. one of the main aspects of this project would be an animated mermaid. I began sketching some ideas and found some inspiration from both Veronikas Pinterest and my own.

From there I sketched a couple ideas. 

After showing these to Veronika and also discussing them with Mark, I realised that they were too scary and didn't really fit the aesthetic of what she was looking for. It was then that I remembered my high school days in the art department, making my advanced higher portfolio with the theme of......Mermaids! 

How could I forget! i dug out some of my old paintings an found that they actually had the look that Veronika wanted. 

Although it was required that the mermaid had black eyes and a baldy heed! but that was easy enough to fix. 

Aye you're well jealous of my photoshopping talents eh?

So I had something to work with and I got started on making an armature.

This initial armature I made was far too over complicated and in the end I made a very simple wire structure that was basically a long spine, 2 arms and 2 short wires at the end to create the tail. 

After alot of fighting with wire, sponge and tights I came up with this. 

I also made a fish armature to practice with. I found that I was struggling to understand the motion of a mermaid tail and decided to make a study of the movements of a tail in hand drawn form. 

beginning with a very simple study i found a much better understanding of the movements

I then filled it in and gave it a tail 

And finally super imposed some water onto it. 

 I also tried some studies of how a fish would move

Also beginning with a very simple structure and then filling it in slightly. 

I would like to refine the fish movements alot more as I don't find them natural or believable yet

I also struggled with the stop motion fish movements

I brought what I learned in the hand drawn to my stop motion. I found that it took me a while to get into the swing of things but eventually I got the hang of it

Here I was trying to get a feel of the armature, I think you can tell that I get to better grips with it later on in the animation

I think this take is much more successful

Also here was a brief practice of the arm movements, I really do not like this though.

 I am still not entirely happy with the movement yet and I definitely need more practice but I am confident that i know the dynamics of what how the mermaids body will move. Although I still need to figure out the torso movements. I also need to make some decent rigs for my armatures. 

I also began making some other fish creatures from plasticine and wire

Another job I had to do was to make a title sequence for the kickstarter video. Veronika said that she wanted a sort of smokey type of title sequence so I eventually came up with this

I didnt really like this first version, I didnt think it looked proffesional enough and so after a bit of tweaking I came up with this

I was much happier with this version, Veronika did like this but unfortuately it didnt go with the rest of the film, she wanted the text to dissolve into a sort of dust so I began trying to achieve that



After seeing this one she wanted there to be more dust and for it to seem like an explosion



Dust title sequence from amy bruning on Vimeo.
For this one she then wanted the dust to form the text


dust title 2 from amy bruning on Vimeo.

Here she wanted the dust to be less dramatic and text to be smaller

I have been struggling to complete the title sequence due to constant changing and I was also waiting for the title logo to be created.

The final thing that we had to create was a sequence of moving cogs. For this section I would say that Pamela and Alice took more of a leading role although I helped to clean and animate the cogs.

Veronika also wanted a showreel of our work and I edited this together for the kick starter.





lemuria showreel from amy bruning on Vimeo.

Overall I am very busy with this project but I am enjoying it none the less.