Went with the character animation brief as I enjoy animation and want to be involved with this in the future.
The idea
The idea I am working on is for a 2D character animation portraying an old cleaning lady in her daily routine. The subject being a humoristic take on the habits and rituals we build through repetitive chores, in this case cleaning. The animation will portray the cleaner's personality through body movements, facial expressions and timing of different actions.
The sequence of events that will take place are as follows. The old cleaning lady is walking to work along a busy street in the city. This opening scene will introduce the cleaner by showing her whole body figure, her way of walking and her day to day environment. In the following scene the character enters her work, an old apartment block where she cleans the communal stairs. The sound of a bucket being filled with water leads into the third scene showing the old lady mopping stairs. Her cleaning routine is very methodical, she mops each step five times and before moving onto the next step she takes two deep breaths. This sequence is repeated continuously until a person walks down the stairs messing up the clean floor. The character sighs deeply, shakes her head and starts all over again from the top of the stairs. Half way through she is again interrupted by a second person coming up the stairs. Again she sighs deeply and shakes her head and grumbles this time looking more red faced and frustrated. Once the person has walked past and isn't looking, the cleaner points her mop at the person in a threatening manner. Finally the last scene is showing the cleaner repeating the mopping routine from the top of the stairs.
Small changes such as the cleaners breathing becoming heavier and her face more red, will allude to time passing. The animation will have music at the beginning and end of the animation and sound effects in between.
Sources of inspiration for the idea:
The main inspiration I had for this idea came from an observation I made in Berlin. A big group of us were walking down the stairs from the hotel. The cleaning lady had just mopped all the stairs, I was the last person to walk past her and as I did she just rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. This made me think about the irony of a cleaner having a very structured daily routine that is completely interrupted by people messing up their cleaned surfaces. I think there is something quite funny about the whole idea of cleaning because it is something that seems so insignificant as it usually takes seconds before something is messed up again.
The second source of inspiration was from a job I had in an after school club a few years ago. The cleaner there was an older lady called Murtle, she had cleaned there for over 20 years and had a very funny dry sense of humor. If any of the kids got in her way she would point her mop or broom at them in a threatening manner, which they thought was very funny.
The final source of inspiration for this idea was from an experience I had in France when I was about 11 years old. I was in a public toilet in Avignon and stupidly decided to wash my feet in the sink. A french cleaning lady noticed this and went mad in french. I didn't understand what she was saying but I got the impression she was very angry, understandably.
Generally the idea is very influenced by Sylvain Chomet's animation Belleville Rendez-Vous and Chris Wares comic book Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Both of these works uses clever techniques in order to portray a characters emotions and expressions without the use of words and dialogue.
Progress so far:
Have finalissed:
Storyboards
Treatment
Discription of character in detail
Content ready to animate
Music track (provided by a friend)
All sound effects
1 comment:
Dont forget to get your webcams out people and the spoils of victory will be shared! much appreciated thanks!
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