When I was 13, while spear-fishing (dart tied to a string) in an inner-city stream, I threw a dart into my own head.
I was an idiot, and hey, I lived with no damage whatsoever. The movie starts out with an adult me in a bar, telling the story to someone else, using items on the table - cigarettes, beer bottles, etc, but the scene fades into the scene in the woods to illustrate the scene better.
(note: this was done in flash, just to get the positioning. character development is in it’s infancy right now. No clue how I want these characters to look).
I’m planning to do a low-impact animation. I’ve got the script and I’m working on the storyboards now, and at the same time, trying to get up to speed on Blender so I can put it all together. But the more I read, the more I wonder if I’d be happier utilizing a team instead of trying to do it all myself.
On the one hand, doing it all myself would be extremely satisfying, assuming I ever completed it and I was satisfied with the results. I’m guessing that it IS possible, if I had unlimited free time and already knew more about blender.
Visually, I’m not looking at a Pixar-type animation. I’m looking more at the Comic-book styled animation similar to the Spiderman series on MTV - which would cut back on material creation and attention to details. (I’m ASSUMING, there), allowing more time/experience to be gained in the animation stage.
At this point, I’ve done the first series of sketches of the storyboards - pretty rough, and I’m in the process of trying to flesh out the entire story in a flash animation, just to get a feel for the timing, editing, number of required cameras, etc.
In other words, I get the feeling I’m approaching this more from a directorial angle than an animator’s angle. The entire movie would most likely be less than 10 minutes, maybe more, I don’t know.
My question, solicitation, etc, at this point is to wonder aloud, am I undertaking waaay too much for a semi-newbie? I’m much more interested in the movie making process than the character building process - to the point that, I was considering just using modelled stick figures to tell the story at one point, rather than bothering to build hands with fingers, rigging the armature, etc, but I realize that I’ll need to provide SOME detail to make the story interesting.
SO.
Now I’m looking at the process of linking/appending external blend files. Which means then, that I can use other characters, built and rigged by other people, and bring them into the main movie. The great thing, from my standpoint, would be then that I will get to focus on learning the animation part, and not have to focus on the building of characters.
Does this sound like a good plan so far?
Here’s a link to the storyboard so far (word doc with only 4 images in place so far).
http://www.funkmusician.com/dart/dart_story.doc
Here’s some reference images I made from some location shooting I did last weekend, which I would use to build up the scenery:
Character-wise, there’s a total of 5 individuals to be created - the 2 adults in the bar, and the 3 kids at the creek. Honestly, I really am looking for the core minimal detail on the characters - kids in shorts, t-shirts and sneakers, adults only from the waist up, with minimal detail, “tooned” shading will be used instead of actual meshes.
So, does this sound doable? Do you see major flaws in my line of thinking here?