Intro Scene

For the intro I already had an angle that I wanted to lean towards. I liked the style of the Old cartoon intros from the 40s and 50s. Cartoons such as Merrie Melody's, Loony Tunes and Disney used a simple intro that was easily recognizable.

The character would be at the centre of the animation and sometimes they would say their catchphrase with a silly tune playing as backing music. Taking these ideas into consideration I wanted to make sometime similar.

Firstly I searched the internet for good background that wasn't too bright and would would compliment the colourful Balloon character. Next I looked on freesounds.com to see if I could find a silly song to grab peoples attention.

The balloon shaped font was called Greetoon Highlight. This was created by adding a extrude modifier to the text then copying the text and then moving it behind but this time with a bevel modifier attached to it. This made the text bulge out making a nice thick border around the text.

The idea to has the singing balloons rising up through the screen came to me late. The vocals on the song made me chuckle so much that I wanted to add some kind of animation to them. As this Balloon Boy cartoon would part of a series I thought it would be right to give it a strong into and the other different coloured balloon may turn up in future sketches.

New Scene - Balloon Animal

Looking at my story board I felt there needed to be a balloon animal sketch. I'm not to sure where the sketch will go in the sequence but I feel this isn't important until I finally put the sketches together. The problem I had with animating the balloon animal was that it would be very difficult to animate hands and the the balloon twist into shape. My first thought was to use a trick that 2D animators would use, they would draw clouds to show fast moving and busy animations, for example fight scenes would often have arms and legs poking out of the cloud.

As this is a 3D animation I couldn't find away to recreate this so I thought it would be nice to just concentrate on the facial expressions of the main character. I recorded some distressed vocals that Balloon boy could be lip synced to and I found a nice sound effect of a balloon being twisted and rubbed. Combining these two effects with some eye movement I was hopping to trick the viewer into thinking there was something else going on.

In the final part of the sketch the Balloon animal in shown in full. Here I added the sound of a child laughing to accentuate the embarrassment Balloon Boy may be having and the fact that he has an audience. Last but no means least I added the fly that was in scene two. I thought it would be nice to have a recurring joke that will slightly link the sketches together.

Scene Two

Scene two gives the viewer a insight into the kind of predicaments and bad luck Balloon Boy gets him self into. Keeping the scene simple and uncluttered was my first design choice. The use of a simple lamp shade would be only object in the scene. The lamp was downloaded for free from an internet site (www.turbosquid.com).

The scene had two key elements; light and the fly. It was important to have the light go out without the scene going to dark. To do this I used two lights one was a directional spot light that shone on the lamp and Balloon Boy and the other was a omni light that I placed right on the shade itself. This light brightened up the shade and emitted a bit more light onto Balloon Boy.

The star of the scene I think is the fly! He buzzes around the light and character until the light goes out and he lays to rest on the end of his nose. I thought this would be an amusing little end to the sketch. I tried to make the fly turn nicely in the air like a real fly would. First I animated the positions I wanted the fly on the time line then I created a utility for the fly. In the Utility panel I clicked on 'More' and then chose 'Follow/Bank'.

Scene One

Through out my storyboard I hadn't put any consideration into the background of each scene. I know I wanted most of the scenes set indoors but I wasn't sure how I was going design this. My first thoughts were to have Balloon Boy live in a average looking family home.

Scene one starts of with Balloon Boy being inflated close to the camera. I wanted to keep him close because I thought it kept a little trepidation before the whole character was introduced. Next I wanted the character to look like he was opening his eyes for the first time. I liked the idea of him being born like Frankenstein's monster so I gave him a line like the one from the classic film.Once he says his line I wanted to give him a beaming smile. This would tell the audience straight away that he is a happy and cheerful character.

The scene was put together by using the control points, camera zoom and syncing the mouth by using the Morpher to match the sound that was loaded into the curve track editor.

The scene I created had a back wall with wallpaper, a lamp and a silly picture on the wall. I wasn't to sure if I liked the décor or if it would look better without these items. What I needed to do was a bit to research into backgrounds. After looking on you tube for a short while I realised that a lot of short animations kept the backgrounds blank. This emphasized the characters within the scene better.

Above is the background style I am going to keep throughout my film. Because the module is focusing of the character it would be wise to leave out needless parts of the environment. The background was created by adding a blurred picture into the environment background parameter.

Storyboards Explained

The name of my animation will be called "The Trails and Tribulations of Balloon Boy". This is a tongue and cheek reference to the the bad luck he goes through. I want to make some short sketches that showcase different comical things that happen in his life. Balloon Boy is a likeable character that seems very excitable and happy. But that happiness soon turns to sadness when time after time he gets hit with bad luck.

• Introduction - The intro will be a simple 2D animation with an happy jingle and Balloon Boy inducing himself.

• Scene 1 - This will see the birth of Balloon Boy. He will slowly gets blown up and enthusiastically says "I'm alive". (quote taken from Frankenstein; "He's alive!").

• Scene 2 - In this scene Balloon Boy rises to the ceiling next to the light shade. He's up there for a little while before he try s to get someone attention. Next his bad luck continues when the light goes out and a fly lands on his nose.

• Scene 3 - This is a short scene where Balloon Boy gets dragged towards a wall due to static electricity.

• Scene 4 - Here someone is undoing Balloon Boys knot. He pleads for them to not do it but he ends up flying across the scene and ends up splatted up against the camera where he slides down with a screech.

• Scene 5 - Scene five starts with a 2D into saying "Balloon Facts" next the scene sees Balloon Boy telling the viewers a interesting fact.

Storyboards

Morpher Modifier - continued

Above is a picture of Balloon Boy smiling.



Above is a picture of Balloon Boy being sad.



Above is a picture of Balloon Boy screaming.



Above is the screaming Morph but I have stretched the eyes by moving the control points on the FFD boxes. I have also made the pupils bigger.