ANIMATED NARRATIVES - WEEK 7 - "WHAT IF?"

By Samridhi Handa

Week 7

This work examines the idea of a “What If” situation. The situations associated with “What If” is usually imaginary and out of the world, usually that is a little difficult or even impossible to happen. My concept works on the idea of an almost impossible situation. It links the possible and impossible worlds as it has instances which are realistic and those instances too which are highly unrealistic. Often, such unrealistic situations help transport the reader or the viewer to another world and provides a good piece of entertainment. These instances also provide vision to a person’s imagination. I have also created this concept as a suspense for the reader/viewer as surprise is often one of the factors helping in engaging the audience with a piece of work.

 For creating this week’s response, I have used the medium of a hand drawn mind map and Photoshop to create the character of Oliver, along with Adobe Illustrator to create other slides for this submission. I have also used an online diagram maker to create a flowchart of the storyline.  This is a concept that I have created for using in a linear animation. By using the mediums and my concept, I am able to express my ideas in clean and clear way.

For inspiration on creating this work, I looked at many references, both online and I also drew my inspiration from the weekly reading that we got. The weekly reading that we got this week was from the book “SYD Field – Screenplay”. From that piece, I read about building a character in chapter 4 and creating a character in chapter 5. I utilised resources from the chapter in order to shape the protagonist. For characterisation, I also looked at this website to form the character.

https://www.well-storied.com/blog/write-stronger-characters

 For the creation of the character drawing, I took information and inspiration from various online sources. I looked at cartoon drawings online to shape my character.

I was also inspired by researching about famous cartoonists who have done such famous animations in the past such as Walt Disney

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney and

John Lounsbery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lounsbery

Research has been the main role in shaping my work because that is where I always get inspiration from. Research is also one of the key elements in shaping any project. Also, I have been practising in the past about creating my project and also about creation of the character which is very important and plays a fundamental role. Iterative loops of practice has enabled me to create and finalise this project. I also started working with a few basic ideas this week and went on to develop that, but they did not work out very well because the narrative concept was a little weak. So, constant feedback by my peers and mentors is also a big factor in the creation of this project. Constant feedback, research, practice, reflection and improvement is thus the essential part of this project.

Downloads:

Download File: week-7-development-work.pdf