BAF 2012 and WIP

I had a week away from uni, working at the 19th Bradford Animation Festival as one of the BAFettes there. This was my second year of volunteering. So it was great to see everyone from last year and meet some new people.

The festival itself is fantastic. There's always something going on, whether it be a talk, screening, premier of a film or even meet-and-greets with people from the industry. It's always lively, so we were always on our toes!

I was lucky enough to meet Christine Phelan from the game company Valve and have a little chat with her about University and showreels.  I was also very lucky and met Vivien Halas, daughter of John Halas of Halas and Batchelor as she collected the Lifetime Achievement Award for Halas and Batchelor. Along with this, I saw various screenings including Aardman Animator Will Beecher on animating The Pirate Captain in The Pirates! An Adventure with Scientists! I saw a variety of other screenings too, which was great and made me feel completly inspired for this year. (It wasn't all screenings, I spent a lot of my time opening doors, running around the museum collecting people, checking tickets and setting up workshops!)

Anyway, back to work:

I changed the story again whilst I was away, based on the critique from the Pitch, the week previous. I re-wrote the script and re-designed the storyboards.
Although these are very rough, it was just get an idea of the story. I was very unsure of the ending, but decided with Kylie that once the tooth monster is destroyed, it becomes tiny toothfairies which fly off out of the cricus. The story now consists mostly of the circus instead, and promotes the medical side in a very mild, silly mannor. The idea of it being that the circus are performing, Mark steals some sweets from an audience member who happens to be a toothfairy. Outraged the toothfairy makes one of Mark's teeth fall out which then turns into a giant green tooth monster which over-runs the Circus. Tilly and the gang have to use their knowledge of teeth to destroy the monster. I finished the animatic when I got back, with help from Kylie. With a review from Helen, I needed to add the narration & character dialouge for it to run much more smoothly. The whole thing was also much too fast, so I needed to slow it down, especially for the audience I was promoting it for.

This is the first draft:




I'm currently working on the re-draft. I narrated it myself, however I have issued a narrator to do the voiceover for me along with the character voices. This should be done over the weekend and I can edit it into the final animatic along with sound effects.