I started this project by mind-mapping any ideas that came to me, with a couple ideas being more prominent than others initially:
A bear is ready to hibernate and their friend, Badger, is anxious at the thought of them leaving, so tries to sabotage their search for a good spot. When Badger realises that this upsets Bear they dig a den for them themselves to say sorry, and it ends with them saying goodbye as Bear goes into hibernation and Badger looks out over the woodland.
A Grandma is trying to get her grandson to sleep, having to do lots of things to make sure he gets off soon, like closing the curtains, putting fairy lights on, giving him some milk, and checking under the bed and in the wardrobe for monsters, until finally the grandson is ready to sleep. I liked the initial premise and it would be an easier project to animate but I couldn't think of a way to create a satisfactory ending.
I developed on the first idea with the bear and badger a lot before I realised it was too long, as well as it needing speech for the plot to make sense when I have little experience of lip-syncing. I wrote a rough draft of a script to get the idea out of my head and even got my sister and a friend to read some of the lines to see how it would work. This script reading is what made me realise just how long it was.
After realising that just the dialogue made this project about 4 minutes long is when I developed other ideas.
One possibility I came up with is a bard in the woods tuning his lute, and then getting into playing when suddenly a bear turns up to listen. He is shocked at first but then continues, seeing that the beat responds positively to his tunes. He eventually offers the bear an instrument and teaches them a couple of chords, where the bear picks up quickly and the film ends with them playing together. I like the simplicity of this idea but I don't think that the setting plays enough of a part, here's the first storyboard:
The other idea was that a knight is in the ruins of a castle where a dragon resides and he and the dragon fight, but when the knight is flung into a pile of he dragon's hoard he discovers a painting and stops the fight to enquire if the dragon did it. The dragon is bashful but nods and the knight compliments their work, taking out a folded piece of parchment to show the dragon that he too is an artist. It ends on the two of them calling a truce and painting the sunset together on top of the battlements. I think I'll be able to have the characters communicate without speaking and the story should be a lot shorter. On the other hand it has more action, which could be complicated to animate as I don't have much experience of this but I'm willing to try. Here's the first sketchy storyboard:
I'm frustrated that I've had to drop my woodland idea as I had a very clear image of the sort of style I wanted to make it in, along with the colour scheme and method. but with this new knight idea I can't imagine it as a final product as clearly. I'll have to make some tests to see how different mediums match the narrative and characters.
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