Story Ideas:

• a Christmas story ( with ice-skating and stuff): contemporary with german nikolaus day, maybe plätzle backen, weihnachtsmarkt und glühweinstände (hauptcharactere 3 mädels)
• Hanzel Longlegs and Noodle Dawn
• some guy listening to his ipod in the street. scene is keep on swapping between his point of view and observing him from an outer perspective. so the music sound will keep on stop. in his point of view everything happening in the street, as well as himself, goes to the rythym of his music. to others he simply looks like a dick
• dad taking his girl on adventures (Laura's tales): 1.driving in the fields --> vollbremsung --> girl flies off, lots of fun but don't tell your mum 2. taking paragliding: challenge for girl carrying up kit ( very heavy) then running down afterwards

This is one of the sketches or designs I made for the festival folk. As I don't want to make a documentary on Tanabata, but much more convey the feeling of the festival the festival folk shall look surreal and serve a metaphor to convey this atmosphere.

This is a floorplan of the area in which my short film is set. It's an urban area, I only drew out the streets though and the houses which will actually appear in backgrounds. Also the route the main character is taking is marked in orange, with red spots showing where she meets other characters on the way.

Storyboard

Originally I started storyboarding by hand drawing. Yet since I want my film to be 2D handdrawn/digital, I invested in a new graphic tablet, which arrived today. As it is a lot easier to make changes on frames and their order, I changed to doing my storyboard digital now.

For inspiration on the cinematography of opening scenes I examined the beginning scenes of some animation , e.g. "Spirited away", as my story has similarities with its action.

Taiko Drummers

 

 Here are some of my reference pictures of taiko drummers which I took on Japanese festivals in Hiratsuka and Hachioji.

The Cow Taiko Drummers

For designing the taiko drummers, who will represent the cows of the legend about tanabata, I first made some sketches realistic cows to get used to the shapes and body parts and structure. I then made a first design of a drummer in cow costume. I tried to kind of draw the taiko dressing from memory so I won't get to influenced and fixed on their actual clothing look. They have a sort of ribbon on their head which I used to represent the horns. Only after designing all the characters I had a look at my reference photos.

I designed the child drummer first, as it is going to be more important than the adult version (if the adult version will actually appear in the animation). Since most taiko groups I have seen, consisted of mixed ages of children, men and women, I also designed adult versions.  

Banner Designs

These are some banner designs. The top one was my first try. I actually wanted head to be the light part of the picture. The hair is supposed to be a film roll. There is also another in the apple. Yet there is so much (too much) detail in the banner that it might rather look belonging to something to do with fashion instead of animation. So I decided to go for simpler design. I also played around with the position of the text, but decided that it looks best in the top left corner.

In the other banners there are only slight changes but I tending to go for the second last one. If the head is smaller, it is easier to recognize that the hair style is a film roll. Also I tried bring the apple in the center and made the red tone stronger. As the banner is supposed to awaken curiosity, so people will actually click on it, I bluntly wrote "Try Me" on it. It has sort of an Eve-theme with the intriging apple. Might seem a slightly dull, but the subconcious might still react to it, if it's being advised by writing. I also brought a transprent film roll in the background to emphasize that it has to do with animation.

One thing which wasn't really intended, but I realized afterwards is that the apple on the white background reminds of the Japanese flag. It's not supposed to do, but coincidently it fits quite well to my third year's project that has to do with Japan.