Pack Mentality
From Concept to Completion
About
What started as a short 30 second video to test out animating, soon morphed into a 10 minute story for our 3rd, and final year's project at our Film Class.
A fantastical tale of tar-like wolves, float-y eared sheep, and something about the environment. Not to mention a climax described simply by some as:
"Dub-step Laser Wolves".
If that doesn't get you interested then I don't know what will.
But as all stories go, ours was not without it's setbacks. Since this was a "Film Class", and not an "Animation Class", we didn't have enough time to finish the entire video. Our lecturers were wonderful enough to be on board with us making an animation, but as the deadline loomed, we realised we wouldn't be able to finish the entire thing. So instead we focused on the last 5 minutes of the video and did as much as we could in time for the screening.
What follows is a recount of our journey; from Concept to Completion, as we worked together to create: Pack Mentality.
A fantastical tale of tar-like wolves, float-y eared sheep, and something about the environment. Not to mention a climax described simply by some as:
"Dub-step Laser Wolves".
If that doesn't get you interested then I don't know what will.
But as all stories go, ours was not without it's setbacks. Since this was a "Film Class", and not an "Animation Class", we didn't have enough time to finish the entire video. Our lecturers were wonderful enough to be on board with us making an animation, but as the deadline loomed, we realised we wouldn't be able to finish the entire thing. So instead we focused on the last 5 minutes of the video and did as much as we could in time for the screening.
What follows is a recount of our journey; from Concept to Completion, as we worked together to create: Pack Mentality.
The Black Sheep and The Wolf |
Pack Mentality |
The Beginning
Draft 1
As you can tell from the two videos above, the end product looks vastly different from what we started with.
Things started out in a more realistic setting; in a forest on the edge of a farm hidden away among mountains and valleys, with our two lead roles being played by Grim the Wolf, and Piper the Black Lamb.
Things started out in a more realistic setting; in a forest on the edge of a farm hidden away among mountains and valleys, with our two lead roles being played by Grim the Wolf, and Piper the Black Lamb.
The original idea for the animation, was to make a story similar to a fairytale or a fable. "A wolf befriends a lamb" and vice versa. So we named the wolf Grim after the Grimm Brothers, and the lamb Piper, after the Pied Piper of Hamlet (one of the Grimm Brother's tales).
Initially, we didn't have much of an idea of what to do with the characters. Annabelle's first idea was that the wolf could get stuck under rocks near the sheep field, and the lamb would try and befriend him while he couldn't hurt the lamb, but I didn't like him being under rocks because there was no way for him to get out or for the lamb to help him, so in the first version I wrote, the wolf was stuck in a snare. This way the wolf and lamb could bond, without the trouble of the wolf straight up killing the lamb. |
Grim used to be stoic, like his name, and the lamb was going to be the thing that broke his harden shell. But even this had its problems; the story was getting too long, and it had too many scenes. Even after the lamb helped the wolf escape, their relationship just hadn't grown enough for it to be believable. There needed to be more time but we just couldn't do that because we didn't have long to work on this, it had to be completed in half a year.
There was a scene with a bear attacking them, but I changed it to a pack of wolves, which was pushing how much Annabelle could draw. Overall, the story needed to change.
The original one focused more on Piper and his perspective, with it starting with him getting bullied by the other lambs. So I tried changing it to have it focus on Grim, but that turned more into a Stockholm Syndrome story where instead of the lamb never leaving the wolf alone, the wolf wouldn't leave the lamb alone. But I didn't like that, it didn't have the right tone or feel that I wanted. Finally I figured out what was wrong.
It was Grim's personality of course, Piper's was also a problem, he was too optimistic about everything, too perfect. Grim was too uncaring. How could we get this grumpy wolf to care about this lamb in a roughly 2 min animation? The answer; we couldn't. I needed to get rid of the stoic Grim, and bring in the cowardly Grim.
There was a scene with a bear attacking them, but I changed it to a pack of wolves, which was pushing how much Annabelle could draw. Overall, the story needed to change.
The original one focused more on Piper and his perspective, with it starting with him getting bullied by the other lambs. So I tried changing it to have it focus on Grim, but that turned more into a Stockholm Syndrome story where instead of the lamb never leaving the wolf alone, the wolf wouldn't leave the lamb alone. But I didn't like that, it didn't have the right tone or feel that I wanted. Finally I figured out what was wrong.
It was Grim's personality of course, Piper's was also a problem, he was too optimistic about everything, too perfect. Grim was too uncaring. How could we get this grumpy wolf to care about this lamb in a roughly 2 min animation? The answer; we couldn't. I needed to get rid of the stoic Grim, and bring in the cowardly Grim.
We had wanted Grim in the earlier versions of the story (the one with the pack of wolves) to be a runt of the litter, because then he and Piper would have something in common; being outcasts. But once again, time constraints were stopping us from showing that. But now with Grim's new personality, that was possible. With the new cowardly Grim, I brought in a couple of new characters; his brother Brutus, and Father Wolf. Both of these characters were visibly bigger than Grim. Brutus is obviously bigger, in both height and muscle.
Brutus was created to be the perfect wolf; he's big, mean, and great at being a wolf. While Grim contrasts that. Grim is smaller, cowardly, and doesn't like to kill animals; visibly disgusted when forced to carry the dead prey home. With Grim's new cowardly personality and aversion to killing, his and Piper's friendship could be more believably formed in a shorter amount of time than before. From there the story ended up changing a lot as well. Piper wasn't the main focus anymore, he didn't appear until about half way through when Grim finds him, (not the other way around from when he was stuck). Grim doesn't get trapped in the snare until the climax; when his brother and father attempt to kill Piper when Grim ran off with the lamb. In the end, Grim is about to be killed by the farmer, his brother and father long gone; chased off by the farmer, and just as he's about to be shot, Piper jumps in and saves him. It ends with Grim and Piper deciding to stick together, rather than going back to his pack. And that was our first draft. I still enjoy it, but the reason we didn't stay with it was because of feedback we got from our lecturer. Grim didn't really have a character arc; he stayed relatively the same beginning to end, and this was out main character. So we went back to the drawing board... |
Draft 2
We took the feedback and changed the story, making it more about the issues of "the environment vs man", rather than one wolf's journey to be who he is. With Grim trying to convince his family to stop eating the farmer's sheep (which were easier to hunt than the wildlife), otherwise they were all going to be killed by the farmer.
We were cool with this change. It had a bigger conflict to it, you were more invested in the character's problems because there were consequences to them, and if things didn't change, then the wolves would be in trouble. This was also around when we came up with the title: PACK MENTALITY. Because it was the pack mentality that was getting them into trouble in the first place; blindly following Brutus' decision to hunt the sheep. With this reworking of the story, that also meant a few other things had to change. One of the first things to go was their names. Grim no longer fit because the story wasn't a "fairytale" anymore. And Piper didn't fit because he was no longer a curious lost lamb in the woods. They soon became Adriel and Clover. Adriel, because it means "followers or flock of God", so it gives him this "holy/good" vibe (and we thought it funny because he tries to save the farmer's flock of sheep). And Clover, because that little lamb is damn lucky to manage to not get himself killed. Aside from names, the other change was a larger cast. We started designing a wolf pack and giving them roles in the story. But we quickly ran into a few snags with this story-line. There was far too many characters, each taking up screen time on what was supposed to be a short animation. Our lecturer really enjoyed this version of the script because there was a scene where Clover straight up head-butted Adriel. While it was a funny visual, it couldn't save the story. Each time we sat down to write or storyboard this version, nothing seemed to flow, everything seemed convoluted and was causing the story to get longer and longer. |
Finally, fed up with the story, and hating the idea of having to work on it... we hit a brainwave:
Why not have it set in a surreal world?
Why not have it set in a surreal world?