A while back I had posted about a little exercise I had started about a guy sneezing at a bus stop. After showing it to a couple friends, I got some feedback that the characters were really flat and there were some possibly confusing motivations going on. I totally agreed with them, but had hoped I could get away with it for the sake of a short test. I think this was another lesson in going all or nothing. By not going for something specific, I got caught giving something entirely vague and open to too much interpretation.
Here's the first take:
The comments kept digging at me until I decided to scrap everything I had and restart(even though I rather liked something about my first take). I think for sure this one feels a lot more solid and I think I explained everything much better this go around(who the characters are, why they act/react the ways they do, etc). I would love to hear how you guys are taking it to know if I am explaining things as well as I hope I am. This is pretty rough and you'll have to ignore the scarf in a few places as it's a fairly complicated setup of parenting that will have to be solved when I get into splining things out.
I think what I liked so much about the first one was how when the guy on the screen left sneezes on the screen right's scarf, the screen right guy is watching the whole time in disbelievement, building suspense until he finally makes his move towards the sneezing guy. In the new take I'm trying to recapture that thought of 'wait, did he just do what I think he did?!?' for the guy on the screen left. The whole shot is more or less a build up to the point that the guy sneezes on someone else's scarf and it seems like both the natural choice at the time and the completely wrong thing to do and I think that the payoff could work by having the guy sneezed on have the same thought as the audience.
As per my comments in the first post about this shot, I think I'm going to be leaning more toward the realistic side of things than cartoony. I love cartoony animation, but there's just something about it I'm not getting right yet with how and when you can break physics and logic. This just means I'll get to enjoy it all that much more as I try and unravel it more.
Right now, I feel as if the reaction from the blue man (screen right) is a little disconnected from the sneeze. I think that the blue man should react an instant more quickly. I like that he isn't chasing the sneezer anymore and is totally reactionary. And the weight on that sneeze is awesome.
ReplyDelete