Creative Media Project
(Esmerelda: The Vengeful Vampire)
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Skills Development
Learning Character Design
On Instagram, I follow many artists accounts and art pages out of appreciation for their work but also to learn and develop my own artistic abilities. One such account, '@colourful.and.wild', announced a live stream on instagram where they would be sharing their character design process. I thought this would be very useful for me as I am planning on doing a character design for Esmerelda, so I took note of the time.
I attended the live stream and found it very useful and intriguing. It was great to see how one might go about sketching a character design and also learning the aspects that make up a character 'design', such as specific facial expressions or items [necklaces, earrings, rings etc] that they have.
There is also a saved version of the live on their instagram page that I can refer to if I so need. Overall, this was a good use of my time as I learnt useful techniques that I can implement into my production.
Character Development and Realistic Arcs
Throughout the entire course of research, and even over production, I have been watching the YouTuber schnee's videos in my spare time or when I'm doing busy work. Schnee makes fictional analysis video essays on multiple topics from specific character arcs, side characters, character types and theories. Mainly they are focusing on making Arcane analysis videos, which I have been watching as Arcane's use of characters and arcs has been a huge inspiration to my own use of character development and arcs. Of course, the story is still being developed and subject to change and so schnee's videos have given me so much more insight into character types etc that what I grasped from just watching arcane. Watching their videos have definitely taught me a lot and been of immense use to me, I genuinely do not know what I would do without the knowledge that has now be been imparted upon me.
How to make Concept Boards
I haven't had much experiences with 'concept boards', honestly I saw the term in passing when online and it sparked the idea of creating a conceptual piece instead for my final product. This was also likely further motivated by my research into animator and concept artist, Kevin Dart. Therefore, considering my inexperience with them, I have decided to do some research into what they are and how you can go about creating one.
Difference Between: 'Summary Comparison Table'
My first article that I would like to mention is one from Difference Between.net called 'Difference Between Mood Board and Concept Board', which like it says discusses the differences of a concept board a mood board. While searching about concept boards, I have often seen mood boards being confused with concept boards, which has made my research a little more tricky.
The article goes over what both boards are and then compares them, they also added a summary table of the comparison that I've displayed here.
They describe a concept board as a presentation board that can act as a stimulus for a specific area of the creative process, for example animating. The array of images, texts, textures and colours can help a designer or animator explore certain visual styles. They can also portray the direction of a project and can also relay existing design ideas.
Difference Between: 'Steps To Creating a Concept Board'
My main takeaways: board should be large so can be seen by a group of people, used as part of a presentation, focus around one stimulus or "topic", steps to creating concept board [identify concept, research, collate stimuli of varying mediums, curate stimuli, create board].
I also looked at this video from interior design company 'Lick', which came with an accompanying article titled 'How to make a mood board from scratch' written by Frankie Marqueé.
Although it is about mood boards, it went over the actual physical creation and I found this very, very helpful as the previous article did not go over this in such depth
My main takeaways: choosing a 'hero piece' [although may not apply to every board I do as that applies more to a mood board concept], pick out a colour palette for the board [will do separate palettes for each], layering is important, very much about textures, don't stick till the very end [allows you to move things around and finalise the look].
How to make a Pitch Presentation
I wanted to make the concept boards and the shortened animation feel less like multiple, separate final pieces and tie them into one final product so I have decided to use those pieces to create a final pitch presentation [or 'pitch deck']. This would be something I would 'theoretically' use to present the animated concept to a studio, like Netflix. I will also record myself presenting the presentation, hopefully to people, in a similar "formal" setting I might find myself in, if presenting to an actual studio.
Other than short treatments, I haven't created any pitch decks, certainly not any catered towards a studio audience so I did some research into what a pitch deck should include. I struggled to find anything specific to an animated concept, so I settled for this tutorial on making a film pitch deck.
Since this was for a live-action film concept, there are things that would not directly apply to the type of thing I am creating. For example, they talked about including any locations that you have for filming, which would not directly apply to me however it could be substituted for something like concept art on architecture or geographical locations.
My main takeaways: make it shareable and accessible by sharing as a pdf [something everyone can open, although doesn't necessarily apply to this exact project as I am presenting it], "if it's not exciting, leave it out", include market analysis [definitely will be adding primary research!], make it very visually interesting and engaging so they don't get bored.
Screenshot Extract of 'How to Make Winning Pitch Decks in 2020 (With PowerPoint Templates)'
I also looked at an article called 'How to Make Winning Pitch Decks in 2020 (With PowerPoint Templates)' by Andrew Childress. It is more orientated to a business setting so it goes into a lot of analytics and finance etc, but it also goes really well in-depth on the content and organisation of the presentation. It tells you how to hook and keep the audience engaged, but most importantly the correct order in which to drip-feed information to the audience.
My main takeaways: sequence and structure are very important, hook + engage and then ask, infographics to make boring statistics look appealing and engaging, keep a minimalistic approach [reduce what's on the screen and compensate with your presenting, audience engages with you instead of trying to read the screen], data is important, discuss the gap in the market [talk about purpose and reasons, use secondary research evidence]
Screenshot Extract of 'What Pitch Deck Basics Can Do For Your Indie Film Project'
This was from graphic designer, Adam Blakemore, on the Raindance website. It definitely helped me understand the specific structure I should keep for the pitch deck. Also, it's a very clearly written piece that I can easily refer back to quickly if I need a reminder.
Overall, I think I've learnt that pitch presentations/pitch decks are quite a fluid concept, but as a whole they all communicate an idea to a potential investor [creatively or financially] and not only interest them but tell them why they should. I think I'll use the research I've done here mostly as a guideline for the type of content I will include in the pitch deck, however I'll present it in my own way. I will also use the research as a gauge for the structure and order of the content I put in it as that was flagged as an important factor in the second article I looked at.
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