Character Bios

Sheriff Elliot J Hampleton


Age – 30 years old

Nationality – Pridian

Height – 6ft 5inches

Skills – Excellent Marksman

Looks Description – Elliot wears a white cowboy hat, an orange shirt with jean trousers. His families Star Badge with an engraving of “sheriff” on it is pinned to his right shoulder. He holds a Winchester 73/ Pridian style rifle and four large three barrel pistols; one pistol per hand. The Sheriff is handsome, has a strong jaw, large biceps, long brown locks, thin nose and small waist.



Small Description – Elliot J Hampleton is the last member of a long family bloodline of Sheriffs. Every Sheriff before him is famous for their countless battles against the evil Chief Kalugoo. Chief Kalugoo defeated and killed Sheriff Elliot’s Father, leaving him to be the only one that can protect the inhabitants of PRIDE.











Sidekick Bio

Fundder and Lightnin’

Age – 5 years old

Nationality – Pridian

Species – Stalorse

Height – 8ft

Skills – Blistering speed

Look Description – Resembles an earth “horse” but with two heads and with white skin. Both heads are at the front of the body, they are long snouted, strong structured and have a beautiful blue and reddish mane.

Description – Fundder and Lightnin’ is Sheriff Elliot’s Stalorse and was given to him as a present from his father when Elliot became deputy. This was shortly after Elliot’s Grandfather died. A Stalorse however isn’t the smartest of Pridian animals; it’s extremely dumb and is slow at making decision until often or not, making the wrong one. Fundder and Lightnin’ happens to be a very scared Stalorse, the simplest of noises makes them bolt (often into a wall), and they are most frightened of the dark. They have become very loyal and have never let the Sheriff down.











Chief Kalugoo

Age – 1348 years old

Nationality – Pridian

Height – 5ft 1 inch

Skills – Planning the destruction for the planet PRIDE

Look Description – A thin structure with 10 legs sprouting from under the waist. Extremely wrinkled and weathered body, full of scars and dents. His skin is dark yellow and green with brown moles that are doted everywhere. He is covered in spirit emblems for chanting and a large feathered crown on his head, (the feathers are black with purple and red streaks running down the centre and edges. They come from the extinct flying creature, the Èlbâtrix). The many years has caused this character to hunch and shrink in time.



Description – Chief Kalugoo is the cause of every death of Sheriff Elliot’s ancestors. His age has given him the chance to see a lot of change on planet PRIDE but it has caused him to go completely insane with knowledge and power. He is a very difficult opponent for the sheriff. He has his own army of henchman that range from the terrible Guūstil and the disgusting TrŐstelĻ.

Character Lesson 2 - Pocahontas found Carbs and Winnie the Pooh found Steriods

This lesson was really enjoyable, we learned about different shapes in character to improve their status in the animations. Triangles are used to show the evil characters because as we grow up we realise that sharp edges are harmful, and a triangle has three very sharp edges. Squares are used for the hero characters because a square is strong, stable and solid. A circle is used for the funny and trust worthy characters, because a circle is smooth and soft and we know they will never hurt us because it has no sharp edges.

What we also did was mixing two of the shape to create new characteristic, for example adding the triangle shape with a square would show a strong but harmful character. We had a task that involved taking an original character, observing the shapes and then changing that shape to create the same character but with a new characteristic.

The first image I recieved was Pocahontas:

I realised that the shape she creates is a strong square so I changed it for triangles and then for circles.

 The large Pocahontas turned out to be quite popular with the rest of the class. The image of Pocahontas is still there even with the mass change. Using circles to round the previous square stature created a funny image.

My next character that I had to change was Winnie The Pooh:

I chose to come up with a simplistic and a heroic version of this cuddly character. Justin mentioned that it is hardest to create a simplistic character because you have to get rid of most of the design but still know its the character you started with.

Here are my attempts:

Simplistic -

Heroic -

I like the simplistic one because it was a challenge to see if I could cut enough away from the actual character. I think I've done well with the character and I think we can still see that its Winnie the Pooh. the heroic character was a lot of fun! It ended out being very funny to see the outcome and I think that's either to do with the fact its such a dramatic change or because the face is still rounded.

Resent blog uploaded to the group blog - Finding the Right Centipede or Millipede

My job for the weekend was to find specific Centipedes or Millipedes that we could use in the trailer. Alan suggested that I look for the creepiest or the strangest, so I looked around to see what I could find.

Whilst looking, I've come across an interesting bio on Centipedes. It gives a description of Centipedes as a whole and their behaviours and hunting patterns. This will come in handy when designing and animating the the creature.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/414.shtml

The site explains that the Centipedes (Although meaning "A hundred Legs") in fact only have around 30 and the legs arrange in segments. There are also legs at the front that acts like a jaw and vertical legs at the back that act like senses to help them go backwards. Their common prey involves insects, spiders and other centipedes and they're also venomous.
What I already knew was they are harmed by harsh heat so they have to keep moist and out of the sun. Although I didn't know that they were nocturnal.




Giant African Millipede

This following Millipede is gorgeous and creepy at the same time. I like the smoothed shape of the creature and the almost innocence of it. Although the Millipedes are perfect candidates for the trailer, I believe the amaount of legs could lead to very difficult problems. For example this species of Millipede can have up to 400 legs; which is 2 legs of either side of each segment.





Back to Centipedes

I found a very interesting Centipede called the "Scolopendra Gigantea"; its venomous, it looks very creepy but with beautiful colours, its legs are long and a separate colour from the body (a venomous yellow) and its extremely fast and agile.

                            

Lip Syncing part two - lip movements

This lesson was once again interesting, I found it amazing how just one move of the lips on the character could improve the who speech.






 In my improvement, I tried to sort out the "Your" and "Sometime".

Lost in La Mancha

FIG. 1

Lost in La Mancha (2002) - Directed by Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe.

Lost in La Mancha is the surviving on set documentary of the uphill struggle Director Terry Gilliam went through trying to film his version of "The man who killed Don Quixote". While showing his torment in making the film, it also shows the audience the possible problem when creating a movie. Unfortunately for Gilliam, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. In the documentary Gilliam says, "If it's easy , I don't do it; if it's almost impossible to do, I have a go" (Gilliam: 2002). This sums up his whole ordeal when making this adaptation of the film. People told him it would be near impossible, yet he tried it anyway because that's how he's worked his entire life.

The documentary became almost impossible to watch by the end of the movie because Gilliam went through so much pain. The finance for the film was lowered to a near unworkable amount, he got his actors late, the extras hadn't been trained, the weather was always against then, the last sound set in Madrid was awful and what finally killed the production was his main actor, Jean Rochefort, who became too ill to continue the film.

There is one other problem that Gilliam had to battle when creating his movie, and David Loftus expresses it like this, "As a film project, Quixote already seems to be cursed"(Loftus: 2003). This is because the project had been taken up by Orson Welles in 1957, the project stayed with him for 20 years but finally ended when his main actor Francisco Reiguera died before the picture could be completed.

Even though the Gilliam project was never completed, he still gave something to the audience; through Fulton and Pepe's editing of endless hours of pre-production footage, they all finally came up with something that can live in the memory of every audience member. Phil Stubbs described this as "The editing process played like an autopsy, in which moments that had seemed insignificant at the time now revealed themselves as clues to the death of Gilliam's production." (Stubbs: 2003) By the end of the documentary we all have sucked into the world of the director and the heartache of losing your movie, which we can all learn from and develop to make sure it doesn't happen to us.

Bernard Bouix, Executive Producer of "The man who killed Don Quixote" expresses, "The battle of Don Quixote is a battle against reality, and I think Film making is a battle against reality. But in this case, reality has been stronger than the dream." (Bouix: 2002)


Bibliography

Gilliam. T, (2002), Lost in La Mancha


Loftus. D, (2003), Documentary Films, Available at http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/LostInLaMancha/, [Accessed on 28th September]

Stubbs. P, (2003), SMART, [Online], Available at http://www.smart.co.uk/lostinlamancha/lm_story.htm, [Accessed on 28th September]


Bouix. B, (2002), Lost in La Mancha






Illustration Bibliography

Fig. 1, Lost in La Mancha Poster, 2002 , [Photograph], http://thecia.com.au/reviews/l/images/lost-in-la-mancha-poster-0.jpg 

Lip Syncing Part One

I found this task relatively easy, nothing difficult in the process. I'm looking forward to the next step and refining the two steps together.

Ed Wood 1994 Review

Ed Wood 1994 Review

Ed Wood Poster

Director - Tim Burton

Ed Wood - Johnny Deep

Bela Lugosi - Martin Landau

Dolores Fuller - Sarah Jessica Parker


This movie is about a Director, Ed Wood who was voted after his death as "The Worst Director of all Time". Prior to the film, I hadn't heard of Ed Wood or his career, so I watching this with a fresh idea of the man. I thought that the man was seriously underrated, it was clear that he loved what he was doing. Although it wasn't clear in his movies, he had an extreme dedication to finish a film to prosent to the audience.

Ed Wood image 2

It was also clear how much he wanted to protect forgotten talent, for example when he meets the character, Bela Lugosi. Everyone thought he was dead because they had forgotten about him. But because Ed Wood Cared about the people he was with, he brought a dream back to a dying man. Matt Murray says, "Ed's failure wasn't due to a lack of caring, want of effort, or any of the normal hurdles we're all told repeatedly that we can overcome if we just keep at it." (Murray, 2006)


Bibliography

Murray, M (2006), http://www.cornponeflicks.org/edwood.html 


Illustration Bibliography

Ed Wood Poster, http://www.movie-list.com/posters/big/zoom/edwood.jpg

Ed Wood Image 2, http://img.filmous.com/static/photos/301/3_midi.jpg,