DRUG DEALING & SHAMPOO #1 (A journal of my current 3D-animated project)
(Note: I had a long-ass intro about how I got into University. If you're not interested in that, just skip right after the first photo)
Two years and a half ago I was a senior in high school and I was getting prepared for University. To explain the Romanian educational system as quick as I can, we go through 8 years of elementary school, and then we have to choose a high school and an area of study (I lived in a small town and there were only five or six high schools. there was only one that followed a theoretical program, there were two theological high schools, an orthodox and a catholic one and the others had technical programs).
I went through four years of social studies, because my dream was to be a psychologist, just like my mom. then, in the last year, I decided that it wasn't suitable to me, even if I loved reading psychology books, because I knew that if I will not make something more practical, I'll get bored and probably drop-out at some point. When I was a small child, I had a huge love for drawing random stuff, such as characters from cartoons as well as original characters. When I was 15 or 16, I discovered Photoshop and Illustrator through a friend that was doing flyers for local parties, and I went on doing small things such as stickers, t-shirt designs and art projects for my high school.
My only two choices regarding my future were to be a Film Director or a Graphic Designer, but since I had no past film experience besides some attempts of doing vlogs and sketches on YouTube, so I chose the latter. Fast-forward a year later, I got into University, and I realised that I made a huge mistake, because I thought the Graphic Art specialization was the same thing as Graphic Design. Imagine my horror during my first hours there, because knowing myself as the lazy piece of shit that I am, I had no chance to transfer to the other specialization.
Then, during the first class, the teacher told us that by year two (the Romanian universities use the Bologna system, if someone is interested about our educational system I can do another post), we would have to choose a direction, and our choices were Easel Graphics (nope), Advertising Graphics (meh) and the newest one, that was implemented just one or two years before I got there, 3D Animation (ding ding ding!). Fast forward again, there am I, doing this thingy.
So, what is the purpose of this post?
I want to keep a "journal" of the animated project I have to do this semester, by posting the weekly progress. The thing is that the semester started 3 weeks ago, but nothing much happened during this time, mostly talking about what are we gonna do and discussing our ideas, so I'll cover it in this first post.
Also, don't expect an out-of-this-world project. As I said in my introduction, I'm the laziest person within a 100 km radius and I'm not chasing good grades, as long as I pass I'm happy. Also, this is a one-man-project that has to be done in 14 weeks by a person who has started this half a year ago.
"Ok, cut to the point, what are you going to do?"
Well, this semester, our coordinating professor said that we got to do an approximately 30-seconds long commercial, but with a twist (we watched animated commercials at the first course and there was this weird one where everybody was like "ok, what the fuck was that?", and she proposed to go for something shocking).
To be honest, we all came with some lame projects. We mostly wanted to do commercials that depicted social issues, like war or drug use, that ended with the main character usually dying (I had this draft about drug dealing, where at the end, a family member of the dealer is killed by someone who bought drugs from him). Our teacher decided that this were too predictable and there was no plot twist, so she made us keep our drafts, but change the story slightly so at the end we show that all this stuff is actually a commercial for a product that has no link to our plot. So, the war story became a commercial for spaghetti, some anti-smoking campaign has to actually advertise some luxury jewelry shop and my anti-drug-dealing project is a commercial for a shampoo.
Yeah, shampoo.
The "weird commercial" I mentioned earlier
And that's kind of it so far. By next week I think I'll have to get my story done and probably start making a storyboard. I think that the following posts in this series will get more technical, because I feel most of the ones reading this are here to see how do you make a 3D Animation, not for my University drama.
Again, if someone is interested, I could make another post providing links with the tutorials I worked with in my first semester. Cheers and have a nice day, fellow Steemians!