OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Pre-Production/Research: All About the Band

OUAN505 - All About the Band:

After discussing with David what/how the characters should look like, behave, and what part of the band they should occupy, we came to the conclusion that these would be the most fitting roles for each individual.

Strawberry - Lead Singer/Lead Guitar:

We decided on a female lead as her confident, cheerful yet slightly aggressive attitude allowed her to be a dominant band member. Seeing as she is the only female, we wanted her to have a big personality and be noticed by our audience easily. Also, it's empowering females as lead singers! Her appearance was thought to be cute yet quirky with a slightly 'punk-esque' look. There's not much you can decide on appearance-wise with these particular models as faces and possible hair/facial hair are the only options we have as we want to keep it simple when it comes to animating. However, this doesn't mean we can't give them outstanding personalities!
We decided on the name 'Symphony' as this in fact a subspecies of strawberry.
http://strawberryplants.org/2010/05/strawberry-varieties/
Symphony will also be donning a rather messy-looking green plume of straggly hair (leaves) to mimic that of a punk-rocker. We will experiment with facial features later on.

Aubergine - Saxophone:

This one of our favourite characters to think about and research into as aubergines are so easily neglected when thinking about vegetables. We came up with the name Aubrey as it has a sense of class and a 'smooth' jazz feeling to it, which fits well with his personality and assigned instrument. He was a particularly tough character to develop as we didn't want to offend anyone by means of stereotyping - we chose for Aubrey to have Afro-Caribbean origins. The reason for such a decision was that after watching Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" music video several dozen times, we were easily drawn to the myriad of black saxophonists and trumpet players. They had this fantastic onstage presence. David came up with a brilliant character design idea of which we have yet to develop.

Chili Pepper - Drums:

Our first impression was that most drummers don't get the recognition they deserve and are quite often overlooked in a band. We wanted to change this by giving our chili a 'fiery' attitude to go with his flavour. Our hot-headed chili was eventually assigned the name 'Pepe' - Spanish origins, chilis are predominant in Mexican and Spanish dishes so this worked. David decided that Pepe should be rather angry-looking.

Lemon - Keyboard:

Larry, our lemon, will be occupying the keyboard. A keyboard is present in the song we have chosen and will be a good feature to animate as not much movement will be required which allows us to focus more on his facial movement and possible interaction with other members. David had the fantastic idea of using a lemon leaf as his moustache. Larry's face would be present on the 'bump' of the lemon at the top, however his standing position would be horizontal so that the top of the lemon actually faces the audience. I thought this would be successful as it would be easier to model with the armatures and weight of the plasticine as it would allow us to keep Larry upright and in the correct position rather than him toppling over if he were stood vertically. Here is an image to illustrate how we want him to stand. Notice the lump sticking out. This will act as a sort of nose on which his moustache could hang.

Orange - Backup Singer/Bassist:

Lastly, our bass guitarist, 'Manny'. Alex, another fellow animator helped us in researching the names for our characters as we wanted them to match their personalities. She gave some good input into what she thought would be memorable for our target audience (12-18 year olds). Manny seemed like a very innocent and cheerful name, not to mention its use in the popular 'Ice Age' franchise of which is linked with Manny the wooly mammoth of whom is incredibly soft and gentle. Being an orange, or a mandarin as we then decided (alliteration and assonance are a great way of choosing names!) made us feel that he was a little bit dopey and didn't quite know what he was doing. The bassist in a band is sadly very neglected and to make use of the stereotype of him 'not really being noticed' in the band, we gave him a personality that forced you to notice him - he's silly, clumsy, and rolls about a lot!