As promised I'm posting the notes from our group meeting yesterday:

These where the ideas we put down for the Western- and Superhero-scenarios to further develop each idea and we also added character-personalities for the mimes in each scenario.

Lastly we asked questions for everything that happens in the scene to find out how our personalities would react, but also if they would actually work in the scenario.

For instance, a really shy character would probably not be a good fit in a audition for a superhero, since it's less likely that he would go to such an audition in the first place.. (hope that made sense..)

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The Western:

The mimes: One scared/nervous, one clumsy and one cocky/"full of himself".

1. He's the "new guy" in town who enters a saloon and heads to the bar to order a drink.
(In what manner does he enter the swinging doors?)
(In what manner does he order a drink?)

2. He spots a pretty girl, but she's with another man.
(How does he notice her?)
(How does he get her attention?)

3. The other man catches him "eye-balling" his girl and approaches. You draw your gun.
(What is his reaction to the man approaching?)
(How does he draw his gun?)


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The Superhero

The mimes: One theatrical, one nervous/clumsy and one cocky/arrogant.

1. The superhero enters the scene to save a baby.
(In what manner does he enter the scene?)

2. The superhero saves the baby.
(Where is the baby?)
(How does he save the baby?)

3. The superhero senses danger. (meteor)
(In what manner does he sense danger?)

4. Superhero gets ready to stop the meteor coming to earth (and saving the world).
(How does he react to the news of a meteor coming?)
(What does he do with the baby?)
(How does he prepare himself to stop it?)

5. He gets rid of the meteor and saves the day (and the world).
(How does his body handle the impact of stopping the meteor?)
(How does he get rid of the meteor?)
(How is his reaction once its all over?)

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- After this was done we played around/acted out different ideas on each scenario to make it easier for ourselves to picture how the storyboard would look for each of the characters.

(The reason we played/acted out the personalities of the actors/mimes beforehand was so that we had some ideas to include when we got home to work on the storyboard by ourselves).

We also wrote down the character-descriptions on pieces of paper and put them in a hat so that we had an equal shot on each of the personalities. We then swapped because Em got to similar personalities for both scenarios. I ended up with scared/nervous mime for the western- and cocky/arrogant for the Superhero-Scenario.

Next task at hand will be t work out the storyboard, and more importantly: Choose one of the ideas above. We might end up pitching both in class on Wednesday, just to see which one is better since we are having some troubles deciding on one within the group.

(Also: thanks to Scott for handing me the notes so I also could write them on my blog)
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- Oh, yes before I forget:

Scott has also modified the textures on the "Morpheus rig" into a mime-look:



(Image taken from: Scott John Ramsay's blog)

This is a free rig from Josh Burton - one of the animators I frequently follow both on vimeo and twitter at the moment. He's work is amazing because he's both a rigger and he animates. So all he's rigs are very animator-friendly, since he builds them to an animators preferences.

(the rig can be found at: http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp)

(You can also read his blog/journal at: http://journal.joshburton.com/)

By the way:
He recently also worked on a fantastic short called;
"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" and you can have a look at that here:

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Such a great film. It's beautiful to look at, the animation is solid and the whole mood of the film is just fantastic. The story is also so well written. Overall it's one of the best short-films I've seen in years.