Dragon Research

I wanted to get a bit more information on dragons as I was struggling to sketch my design. Dragons are very complicated and I feel would be a nightmare for me to model in such a short amount of time. I started looking into computer games for movement and dragon designs as well as looking into traditional shapes from China and the West.





The Spyro video is really helpful, I like the design of Spyro with his quite square features around the mouth. I also like his colour scheme and may hint at the purple in my own dragon design as it has connotations of royalty and high stature, so will make the production company seem of good standing. The beginning also has the idents for the games companies, the first two are of significance to me as the Sierra one is in black and white and stands out really well, and the second has a dark background yet uses the fire effects to stand out. Both are memorable and the second especially would fit in with my own ident scheme for the Dragon.




Furthermore, I decided to make a maquette of my Dragon as I could not find any suitable tutorials online and it has helped me greatly with the shape and model of my character. I have used these images on my image planes to create the model in 3D easily, and understand the geometry of the dragon face much more. I have only decided to create the dragon head as I feel a whole dragon with body, wings and a tail would be far too complex to achieve alone in the time I have left, especially considering my other designs as well. The one thing I do want my dragon to do is breathe fire, so I have been experiementing and researching how to do so. I will enhance the images in After Effects, yet believe I will also create the fire in Maya.




I found two easy ways to make fire in Maya, the first is using Fluid Effects > Get Fluid Sample and the other is using Particle Effects. Comparing the two images, I will use the Fluid Effects as is has the correct shape and stength that I wish to use for my Dragon. It is quite strong and powerful and I would like this to be conveyed to represent the production company.

Further Research

IDEA ONE:




I looked into a few more silhouette pieces to see how effective this style is. I really like the secong piece in particular as it uses the red colour really well against the black and white, the use of colour is really effective. I especially like it between 30-45 seconds where there is the black background against the white figures, and they us colour for emphasis on the butterflies. This is the type of effect I would like to achieve with my piece, using the B&W against the colour of the glow from the figures and the fireworks display.

IDEA 2:


I next started looking at current bomb animations to give an idea of how people 'cartoonize' the bomb, which can seen as an aggressive item, in order to make it seem friendlier.



Obviously this video is based on the Mario games, and I really like the cartoon style as it makes the character have appeal, which is important as I want the production company to be appealing to the audience. I do not understand why the bomb is wound up, possibly to make it less threatening, yet this is not something I will use in my designs.

Initial Ideas Two

My other key ideas that I will continue with are that of a dragon and a bomb. My reasoning for this is that I wanted a recognisable character like the Universal world of the Lion roaring. I believe I could create a similar effect with a dragon blowing fire and it forming the Bang Bang Bang logo. The dragon shows power and strength, as well as appealing in a traditional sense to the older generation and seeming to be quite 'cool' for younger audiences. I truely believe it could be an iconic image, I just need to experiement and further the design.



The bomb is also another play on the words, and the image includes both the logo and the character itself, as the logo forms part of the wire that is on fire and counting down towards the bomb. He can react to his eminent demise and this will allow me to portray lots of character animation and expressions.

Initial Ideas

My first ideas for the brief were involving fireworks, due to the bang sound and the positive celebration connotations that the images would give.



After looking at colours I decided I wanted to play around with black and white so I decided to make all of the characters white against a black background, using a silhouette. I wanted to make the characters black with a white outline but I am unsure how I would achieve this.



Colour is used to represent a light soul of each person, that conjoins to make the fireworks. The blue and white lights that join together are cold and made to seem unhappy, yet when the fireworks explode there is lots of bright yellow and warm colour as this is the effect that the production company will have on the audience.





I tried modelling a character for this, yet found making my storyboards that I lied the wooden figure as it can stand for anyone and therefore everyone is represented as liking the company, so I believe I will stay with this.

Inspiration Research

From looking at current film company idents i can see that most of the backgrounds are plain with the logo of the company featuring prominently. I will use this for my ident, with a little animation focused on the name of the company. They are also all quite short, so even if I produce a longer ident I will produce a shorter version to be able to be used before a film.

BRIEF CHOICES

I have decided to produce the Ident brief on my own rather than working in a group. I am going to slightly alter the brief however; rather than using the National Gallery as my client, I am going to produce Idents for Boom Boom Boom Productions.
This is my initial draft of my brief sent from Zia Khalid at BBBP:

Client: Banag Banag Bang Productions

Bang Bang Bang Productions is a production company based in Chichester, West Sussex, which specialises in making films.

We make lots of films throughout the year but we've always struggled on establishing our identity. We are a small production company as we have six members and make all types of films including comedy and thriller.

What we'd like you to do is produce three different opening credits [idents] showing the name Bang Bang Bang Productions. They do not have to be long, 10 seconds each will be perfect.