Surreal Pack Mentality
Draft 3
Placing Pack Mentality in a surreal world we realised was a great idea. I mean we were making an Animation, a medium that can do literally anything, and our original idea was to set it in the real world? There were 7 other groups making short films set in the real world. But we had the opportunity to do something completely different...
Our next draft took a drastic change, we threw everything from before out the window and started over. The only characters left standing were Adriel, Brutus, and Clover, and even they weren't the same as they were before.
Our next draft took a drastic change, we threw everything from before out the window and started over. The only characters left standing were Adriel, Brutus, and Clover, and even they weren't the same as they were before.
Adriel became a loyal member of Brutus' pack. Very eager to help out his leader by hunting sheep and capturing any prey Brutus desired.
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Brutus was no longer Adriel's brother, and instead became the monstrous tar-like leader of the entire wolf pack. In charge and could make other animals do what he wanted by capturing them in his tar.
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Clover was a young lamb sought after by Adriel as a meal for Brutus. And inadvertently opened Adriel's eyes to the destruction Brutus was causing over the land.
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And their names were still relevant! So we didn't need to change them. Adriel still had this "holy/good" vibe to him because he saved the land by defeating the big bad that was destroying it. Brutus was straight up evil, so his name being similar to "brutal" was good. And while Clover doesn't relate to much, he was redesigned so that from every angle, his head looked like a Four Leafed Clover.
Of course it was getting rather late to be completely changing the story, especially for an animation, so we rushed into concept ideas and the story. Trying to get as much done before we showed our idea to our lecturer.
Of course it was getting rather late to be completely changing the story, especially for an animation, so we rushed into concept ideas and the story. Trying to get as much done before we showed our idea to our lecturer.
The first version of of our surreal story was littered with problems. For one it was far too long and didn't really have a clear end, which is the main reason we never finished the storyboard for draft 3 and instead revised it. The other problem was that it focused too much on Brutus at the beginning, it was starting to feel like this was Brutus' story, and then suddenly we cut over to Adriel and start telling his story, just who is this wolf? Is he supposed to be Brutus or what??? Clover was also an issue, we tried to keep his jerk personality and it made you wonder whether he was trying to help Adriel at times or not, he seemed to have no point and was just there to annoy Adriel. And finally, Adriel didn't have a clear arc again. He basically appeared, fell in a hole, and started having an existential crisis. Yeah confusing..
Final Version
We focused more on Adriel in the beginning; showing his loyalty by capturing a sheep for Brutus to eat. This gave Adriel a character arc. He was Brutus' right hand man, his most loyal follower. Eager to please and willing to do anything for Brutus. He was so focused on getting Brutus' attention however, that he ignored all the destruction they were causing. Too enveloped in going along with the rest of the wolves, with this 'pack mentality', to realise what was going on. But when he did back track through the land and saw what they were doing with his own eyes, he had to figure out if he wanted this to continue or not.
Brutus doesn't have a character arc. We tried to give him one in the previous drafts when they were brothers, but when we started writing the surreal version, we really wanted to do a "Good vs Evil" kind of story. Brutus oozed evil, and you're not even certain if he was ever a wolf to begin with, or if he just took that form. And we really liked that fact about his character; we could manipulate him to be this despicable being. His actions selfish, and it needed no reason to explain why aside from "because he can".
Clover lost his grumpy nature, he became a lamb just trying to survive. Running into the tar forests to lose Adriel. Inadvertedly he showed Adriel what he and the pack had been doing to the land. It's hard to say if he had a character arc, he had the chance to be rid of Adriel, but chose to save him, so you could say that that one scene was his arc. But aside from that we thought of him as more of a symbol. Clover represented the land, when it was new and not ruined by tar. If Adriel chose to give the lamb to Brutus, then he was essentially dooming the land. But if he didn't, then there was hope that things could change.
We spent the rest of the time before the deadline, in a mad rush to finish the animation. Annabelle would spend days at home animating, while I took what animation she had completed with me to class. Working on editing the video and sound effects. Things were hectic during this time and I honestly don't remember much of it. There was a lot of long days staring at a computer screen, and frantic moments trying to find documents buried in file after file on our USBs.
I remember that when we first showed our lecturer the ending with the music we used, he made the comment of it sounding like a gay disco, and another teacher thought our animation was closer to a music video than a short film. But we didn't care. There are times when it's good to listen to criticism, but others where you just have to do what you think is best. Yes the dubstep music sounds like a disco, but we specifically chose dubstep early in the animation process because we wanted Brutus' soundtrack to be unnatural. He himself is unnatural, he destroys the world around him. So we wanted a synthetic sound for him. If there had been time to work with composers, we would've told them Brutus' soundtrack was dubstep/rock, while Adriel's was more natural/classical (though it would've started out dubstep since he was covered in tar in the beginning). We also didn't mind that our climatic ending looked more like a music video because even though that wasn't the intention, it is what we like. I mean we'd been making musical animatics on our channel for 2 and a half years now, you can't expect that not to influence our film.
The ending of the film was something we were very excited about. When we came up with the idea for it to be set in a surreal world, and when we wanted Adriel to confront Brutus near the end of the film, our minds instantly went to "MASSIVE ANIME FIGHT". Which is always a great place to go.
Brutus doesn't have a character arc. We tried to give him one in the previous drafts when they were brothers, but when we started writing the surreal version, we really wanted to do a "Good vs Evil" kind of story. Brutus oozed evil, and you're not even certain if he was ever a wolf to begin with, or if he just took that form. And we really liked that fact about his character; we could manipulate him to be this despicable being. His actions selfish, and it needed no reason to explain why aside from "because he can".
Clover lost his grumpy nature, he became a lamb just trying to survive. Running into the tar forests to lose Adriel. Inadvertedly he showed Adriel what he and the pack had been doing to the land. It's hard to say if he had a character arc, he had the chance to be rid of Adriel, but chose to save him, so you could say that that one scene was his arc. But aside from that we thought of him as more of a symbol. Clover represented the land, when it was new and not ruined by tar. If Adriel chose to give the lamb to Brutus, then he was essentially dooming the land. But if he didn't, then there was hope that things could change.
We spent the rest of the time before the deadline, in a mad rush to finish the animation. Annabelle would spend days at home animating, while I took what animation she had completed with me to class. Working on editing the video and sound effects. Things were hectic during this time and I honestly don't remember much of it. There was a lot of long days staring at a computer screen, and frantic moments trying to find documents buried in file after file on our USBs.
I remember that when we first showed our lecturer the ending with the music we used, he made the comment of it sounding like a gay disco, and another teacher thought our animation was closer to a music video than a short film. But we didn't care. There are times when it's good to listen to criticism, but others where you just have to do what you think is best. Yes the dubstep music sounds like a disco, but we specifically chose dubstep early in the animation process because we wanted Brutus' soundtrack to be unnatural. He himself is unnatural, he destroys the world around him. So we wanted a synthetic sound for him. If there had been time to work with composers, we would've told them Brutus' soundtrack was dubstep/rock, while Adriel's was more natural/classical (though it would've started out dubstep since he was covered in tar in the beginning). We also didn't mind that our climatic ending looked more like a music video because even though that wasn't the intention, it is what we like. I mean we'd been making musical animatics on our channel for 2 and a half years now, you can't expect that not to influence our film.
The ending of the film was something we were very excited about. When we came up with the idea for it to be set in a surreal world, and when we wanted Adriel to confront Brutus near the end of the film, our minds instantly went to "MASSIVE ANIME FIGHT". Which is always a great place to go.
Trying to choreograph fight scenes are hard though. It's difficult to figure out what moves to use and when. Annabelle did most of that. I did write some fight scenes in the script, but Annabelle drew out anything she could think of and chose what worked and what didn't. Needless to say the other groups were just as excited about our film as we were.
During the entire process, our lecturer kept telling us to not forget about the credits. It's something that people usually leave until the very end, and then realise that there's not enough time to get them done. Or that they end up looking boring because you didn't have time to do more than copy paste people's names while using the Arial font. Annabelle and I had known from the beginning that we wanted to have some animation in the credits; be it a walk cycle as the character's names popped up, or something else. When we completed the storyboard, we ended it with Adriel and Clover on a hill while the stars started coming out, and thought that would work great in the credits. It was really fun to show off our animation to the class, and then have them laughing in the credits when they realised the wolf and lamb silhouettes were moving. I remember really loving that moment. Just this small bit of animation in the credits, and people seemed to love it so much, it kept them from tuning out after the ending at least.
Working on this short film was very difficult. We only had 6 months to think of an idea, build upon that idea, and execute it. And we didn't start animating until very late in the game. But it was a lot of fun too.
The Screening was amazing. There was 8 groups to go through, which is amazing on it's own because every year previous only ever had maybe 3-5 groups, people dropping out and all that. But there we all were, ready to show off our short films to friends, family, and even people involved in the industry. Our film was played after the intermission, something to surprise people and help get their attention back on the screening because it was starting to drag on. No one was expecting an animation, this was a film course after all, so it was nerve-racking. We could only show the last 5 mintues or so of our film, we didn't have time to finish all of it, so we focused on the ending because it was the part we wanted to show the most (and because you can kinda get the gist of the story just watching that).
It was a hit! We had numerous people afterwards come up to us to congratulate and talk about our film, that's where I heard the comment "Dubstep Laser Wolves" from one of my classmate's friends. People were so interested in how we made it, and I even had an in-depth discussion with someone who was so curious about what the first half of the film's story was. I really loved that night.
As of right now, we haven't progressed any further with the animation, we decided after graduating to focus more on our channel and to finish the 5/6 Monte Cristo animatic (which we did!). We're still focusing on our channel, but do plan to hopefully finish the full animation one day. For now you'll just have to settle for the storyboards.
During the entire process, our lecturer kept telling us to not forget about the credits. It's something that people usually leave until the very end, and then realise that there's not enough time to get them done. Or that they end up looking boring because you didn't have time to do more than copy paste people's names while using the Arial font. Annabelle and I had known from the beginning that we wanted to have some animation in the credits; be it a walk cycle as the character's names popped up, or something else. When we completed the storyboard, we ended it with Adriel and Clover on a hill while the stars started coming out, and thought that would work great in the credits. It was really fun to show off our animation to the class, and then have them laughing in the credits when they realised the wolf and lamb silhouettes were moving. I remember really loving that moment. Just this small bit of animation in the credits, and people seemed to love it so much, it kept them from tuning out after the ending at least.
Working on this short film was very difficult. We only had 6 months to think of an idea, build upon that idea, and execute it. And we didn't start animating until very late in the game. But it was a lot of fun too.
The Screening was amazing. There was 8 groups to go through, which is amazing on it's own because every year previous only ever had maybe 3-5 groups, people dropping out and all that. But there we all were, ready to show off our short films to friends, family, and even people involved in the industry. Our film was played after the intermission, something to surprise people and help get their attention back on the screening because it was starting to drag on. No one was expecting an animation, this was a film course after all, so it was nerve-racking. We could only show the last 5 mintues or so of our film, we didn't have time to finish all of it, so we focused on the ending because it was the part we wanted to show the most (and because you can kinda get the gist of the story just watching that).
It was a hit! We had numerous people afterwards come up to us to congratulate and talk about our film, that's where I heard the comment "Dubstep Laser Wolves" from one of my classmate's friends. People were so interested in how we made it, and I even had an in-depth discussion with someone who was so curious about what the first half of the film's story was. I really loved that night.
As of right now, we haven't progressed any further with the animation, we decided after graduating to focus more on our channel and to finish the 5/6 Monte Cristo animatic (which we did!). We're still focusing on our channel, but do plan to hopefully finish the full animation one day. For now you'll just have to settle for the storyboards.