Week 16: Going Live - Axis Briefing

So today we received the "Going Live" brief and, let me tell you, it's a gid yin!

We have to prepare a 30 second promo sort of deal (short story/trailer etc) based within the world of J.R.R Tolkien's "The Hobbit". Having read the book myself, and being a fan of the films, I am hugely looking forward to this project.



After the meeting we all sat and discussed possible ideas for the film, the most popular ideas within the group (myself included) is that a back-story of one of two elements/characters of the original story. We discussed the background stories of either the dragons or the wizards primarily. There are some wizards that are briefly mentioned within "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" stories themselves, and so there was possible scope to create a back story of one of these, or to use existing ones.

In the end though the dragons, like they did in the times of the 2nd and 3rd ages, prevailed. We decided to a short back-story of the Dragons leading from the story of their origin and moving through their journey ending with the introduction of "Smaug The Golden".


For the style, the team felt that it would be best to try and keep the "Tolkien feel" as is presented in the books. Kieran, being the almighty fan of the Tolkien tales put forward the idea of using the map as the main style reference, and looking a paper-like/origami sort of feel to the animation and without a doubt, this seemed the best way to achieve this. Although my 2D mind found it hard to picture Tolkien's map in a 3D world, I completely felt that the map-style was undoubtedly the way forward. 

 




With the origami thing, I certainly understood what the intended aesthetic was but I worried that, with origami being a completely different medium in style and appearance, the map feel may be lost within a sort of papery chaos. However, it would lend itself useful for transferring this 2D style into 3D. Undeniably, tests are going to need to be done to see if these elements can work together to achieve the desired effect.

And so our journey begins.