My next preject
 

as you may have guessed from my thread "Short film ideas" I have no idea what to do next

I want to finally animate something but i just cant think of anything

any ideas?

Hey hey there.

If i have no clue. What so ever.
Then i watch tv shows, films, comic books, random googling

And this inspires me pretty fast if i`m stuck.

If thats not your tin can.

Then do something you dreamed of when you where 10 or 12 years old. Or do something you miss from your childhood.

Maybe animate that cool little GI Joe man you played till the legs dropped off.

Hope it Helps!

Aside from getting your feet wet with a bouncing ball, a typical thing to start rigging/animating would be a flour sack or something like that. To get an idea of what kind of stuff can be done with this, go rent Disney's "Aladdin" and observe the way they gave humanistic qualities to the flying carpet. Or look at any commercial where a product is animated. It's a good way to get started...the rigs aren't too complex...and it's a good real-world application.

Aside from that, if you don't want to rig and want to concentrate on the animation itself, search around for a simple rigged character (as in made from primitives) and have at it. If you visit the animationmentor site, you'll find links to student blogs that show off what they do with simple characters which may serve as some inspiration.

btw how come 2 topics on the same subject?

The main problem is I never dreamed of anything when i was little
I dreamed of getting a good job and a nice house, with a dog


.....I had no childhood

when i watch TV shows and films the only ideas i can think of are the exact thing that ive just watched

and i dont just want to animate random stuff


@aikoworld (second post) the first one was on HOW to think of ideas and this one is begging for ideas because nothing i try works

Well, that's something too. Why not make a film about a kid doing some crazy stuff and then wakes up to a normally perfect life?
You just need to analyze thing deeper. There's inspiration to be found in everything... Take an object and think about how it's made, what it can be used for(realistic or imaginary), what memories it brings up etc. sooner or later you'll find something interesting.

Benny

ah gotcha.

Ok well read a book if you dont have your own ideas, read comics.

lol argh i completely relate to your position elephantic. You just have to start somwhere, before i started art (i started relatively late), i used to be awfull for ideas, because my linework was crap i didnt have the confidence to just let go and express anything.

Do somthing super loose that has very little grounding on traditional asthetic. Get somthing like charcoal, wet ink , anything doesnt have to be art supplies and just make shapes man. Its like trying to find shapes in clouds or bubble bath.

If you watch certain programs and read certain types of books its inevitable that any ideas you have will be relatively cliched. These are ideas that have allready been interprted artisticaly, if you start loose or look at abstract works that you arnt used to and think of how they could form part of the world, to start off ignore a story line just think of a premise.

Here are a few things to think about, these are underlieing premises you see all the time, its the interpretation thats is yours:

-abstraction, worlds with differnt rules of physicis, light could be solid oooo endless
-scale, worlds beyound our vision
-anthropomorphic characters, What would a elephant do if it had a day where it could think like a human?
-inanimate objects, the drawing comes to life oooh
(the above two are basically disney, their interpretatoins are endless though)
-combination, what would happen if you mixed a horse with a sheep, how would that horsheep feel about that.
(i love this one for starting off, e.g. monkey + hammer in an echer painting)

A thing to do would be to write down two columbs, one with objects, places, people and the other with contexts and then randomly link two togeather and see what you think of.

e.g.
egg war
crystal mystery
ant lunchtime

This is a bit of a lecture i know but i hope it helps :)

:lightbulb:

I went to the stock cars last night and there were no crashes at all
and i thought of doing an action movie with extremely ridicules stunts, like mocking die hard or something similar

I could combine it with elephants, poachers or a lion or the like could kill a baby elephants mother and the baby elephant suddenly goes macho. Queue mindless action
it would be perfect because i love elephants and like messing around with effects

although now i realise Jsprogg had a similar idea a few months ago with rambi

what do you think?

it sounds like it could be entertaining :)
a good challenge for you too

you should have something more comical than a poacher or lion
something people wouldn't normally expect but still somewhat plausible

I thought about doing it over something really minor, like someone accidently stands on his foot. That might be funnier

If you need a lion you can have mine...... at a price! Nah if you really want it give me a shout, as loong as you dont pass it off as yours!

thanks :beer:

but I want to say I did everything

so you finished the lion?

alternatively i could use a mouse

it might be more comical yet still plausible (in people minds that is, the fact is that elephant's eye sight is so poor that they cant even see mice...)

the mouse could be scaring one of the elephants friends and the elephant really overreacts

it would be a good opportunity for me to practice fur as well

are you goign to have your hero elephant turn real buff? haha, that would be funny to see... a muscular elephant breaking down walls to kill the mouse... haha

...possibly

it might be funnier if hes really weak and harmless baby

how this for a story?

shot of baby elephant wandering about and generallyt being cute and harmless, like in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0tWZqcedMA

a tiny mouse then scuttles along right in front of another elephant, the elephant sees the mouse and is terrified, the baby elephant then suddenly sees red, charging at the mouse

mouse sees elephant and runs away

in chase mouse runs through boxes in the middle of the savanna, mocking starsky and hutch

baby elephant pulls gun, fires few shots

mouse doges bullets (with matrix effect, as here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCl1csERsMc)

mouse whistles and about 50 mice come our of no where and open fire on elephant, somehow elephant doesnt get hit at all (mocking most action movies) and elephant fires only 2 shots and all mice die.

chase continues.........

thats as far as ive got so far, i need to watch some chase scenes on youtube....

hmm.. not sure mate, started with a premise that has potential but dips very far into cliche, you have to keep the characters relatively consistant and clear. Who is the bad character who is the good character.

You want to humanise two animals, do you know how to do that, is this an approachable story?

For the start at least the elephant is the bad guy and the mouse is just an innocent little mouse

however im toying with the idea of halfway through the chase reviling why the elephant hates this mouse so much so the viewers view of who is the bad guy shifts

"started with a premise that has potential but dips very far into cliche"

TBH I think the premise is cliched as well.......

I came up with another idea today in biology

A war of the immune system
white blood cells against the relentless assult of the viruses, again it would be a good chance to practice effects which i enjoy doing as well as regular animation

What do you think?

yeah - definitely think this new idea is better and easier to pull off. have you thought about sketching up some storyboards? they will really help you visualize your idea.

Yeah im gonna do some sort of storyboards, i just wanted confirmation that this ideas not complete cack

should i humanise the blood cells/viruses or just depict them as what they really are?

Ok, ive had another idea

mammoth Vs man. to start with the story is told from mans perspective, mammoth plauges man by stealing food, destroying land to get to food
but then it switches to the mammoths perspective, every year the mammoth works miles in blizzards for food but one year he finds man has built a colony in his way so he has struggle through fences to get food, just to find most of the food has been taken by man.

Switch to mans perspective again, someone rises up to stop the mammoth 'stealing' 'their' food
switch to mammoth who is cold and hungry fighting through the blizzard as aforementioned man charges towards him.....

Obviously it needs development but what do you think of the main idea?