Rationale

Since learning about what's expected of us in the biggest module of the course, I have been thinking about ideas for the past few months that will allow me to apply the skills I've learnt so far, as well as develop and learn new things. I decided I'd like to explore a different way of telling a story, expressing emotions using subtle elements of an animation, such as lighting, colour schemes, and music.

I was inspired to look at this angle by a few short films I have seen recently, such as Glen Keane's 'Duet' and Ryan Woodward's 'Thought of you', which is the sketchy, smoothly animated style I would like to try and replicate somehow. Initially I thought it would make the most sense to animate two dancers in a routine, but I could translate their movements into animals; It depends what kind of music I use and the choreography, but I thought it better to explore other options too.

After talking to my tutor about my ideas, she is willing to get me in contact with a dance school teacher she knows, who's students would like to work with an animator, so that I can work collaboratively with people who know how to dance and choreograph a piece. This combined with finding a musician who could compose a song for us, or finding a track we like, is really starting to bring this project together already.

Until then I will need to research into a broader range of animated dancing, such as from Norman McLaren, and experiment with a few ideas on how to tackle this brief until one particularly stands out.

Here's the Rationale that summarises my ideas so far: