Sting Production- Minnie Minerva

This is just a concept sheet for the Sting at the very begining of the project exploring ideas for the numerous genres we where given the choice to choose from.

The origional concept included many of the characters from the concept sheet in one sketch. This was an attempt to encompass all the genres given to us and interlink the different stereotypes and how each one would react in context to the genre they where from. They would be reacting to the burlesque-like "Minnie" Minerva in a style based on Tex Avery. However, it was far too long for the 20 second time limit inwhich we were to keep to, and so as the 1950's "film noir" based detective fitted in more closly with the image of the Minerva, he was kept, while Charlie Chaplin and Bill the Blob were cut.

This is the origional storyboard for the now "film noir" based Tex Avery style sting.

It was then made into an animatic in an attempt to establish the timing and how effective it was when physical direction and sound effects where added. "Minnie the Moocher" by Cab Calloway was the origional song inwhich the Minerva character was based around, so the aim was to include the shady style of film noir and combine it with the exaggerated and somewhat parody like style of tex avery. The song also acted somewhat like a narrative of the sting, linking directly to the minerva character via use of the name. This was an attempt to cause cohesion between the song and the content of the sting.

This is the character turnaround for "Minnie Minerva." She was the only character to be animated in full colour in the sting as this was meant to portray her vibrancy and inpact when she entered the black and white "film noir" scene of Murphy the detectives world. She was to be the "Jessica Rabbit" style character. This is evident in her appearance although an attempt to inject the style of Greek art was also made as it is where the mythical character was origionally derived. A condition of the sting was to include the image of the Minerva as it is the mascot of the university. She is a personification in an attempt to meet these requirements.

This is the character turnaround for "Murphy" the private eye detective. He, along with the backgrounds of the sting where to be animated in grayscale. This was both to fit the stereotypical style of the Film Noir genre and to give contrast to the Minerva, making her have more of a visual impact when she entered the scene and also to give the sting a definite and sort of graphic stylization which somewhat implies the significance or objects  and character, much like the mechanism used in Sin City.

These screenshots display the animtion technique used to animate the sting. It was very much based on the traditional "onion skin" flipbook style and was an attempt to emulate the way inwhich Tex Avery cartoons where origionally animated.
The storyboard, which had been split into scenes, was put into the first program where the keyframes, breakdowns and inbetweens where then established. Each picture was put on a different frame and by lowering the opacity option of the layers, the images could be plotted in relation to each other and thus the sequence of movement was formed. These files where then took over to Photshop, where frame animation was possible. A frame was taken of each or the different images to form a type of film reel. The timing was then experimented with and if more frames where needed, the scene would go back to the first program for futher editing.