Week 2 & 3 – Out Of Your Head

By (Sophie Khodabocus, Berni Bozsik, Anushka Bhanot, Ceren Firat, Zeng Zeng)

Reflection of Week 1: by Sophie

Points of reflection I noted and took to discuss with my group at the start of Week 2:

we need to be willing to leave behind our initial idea
when you compare other groups and their storylines to our initial idea – ours is way too complex for a 30 second film. I agree with the tutors that it feels like a scene from a feature film and it doesn’t stand alone as a story in itself.
Our initial idea leant on a lot of background information and context and we need our story to be readable to a new audience who is given no other information beyond the visual + sounds played within 30 seconds
Most groups have either 1 character or 2 (pushing it). We don’t have the ability to consider more than this given the time (we would need to establish characters and it would take time away if we had 3)
Our initial idea was too cliche and predictable, not just the fact of the deal but our actual characters (their interaction was always gonna be cliche if he was a prince and her a creature/monster) so either we need to abandon them OR we reuse elements of our ideas to create a new character add to our work
Our story should have ONE action point or change not multiple because maybe that’s too much for 30 seconds – we don’t have time for multiple twists

Mushroom Research: by Sophie

Mushroom Growing : by Sophie

During the Christmas break I had the opportunity to test a mushroom growing kit. The kit was a Pink Oyster Mushroom kit and was very easy to care for. After cutting a cross in the plastic of the grow bag on the first day, I simply sprayed the opening (roughly 10 times) up to 2 -3 times a day. As shown in the photographs above the speed of growth occurred very quickly.

Overall I found this experience really interesting . I particularly liked seeing the intricacy of the mushrooms’ gills and how they developed over the time period. These can be seen more clearly in the final photographs I took on the last day:

Final Day: 9/01/26

Story Boarding & Character and Concept Development:

As shown below several members of our group tried storyboarding independently. This allowed us to visualise how our narrative would play out from different perspectives & angles (quite literally!). I think this task was useful as it allowed for greater variety and creativity of shots.

Below I created another initial storyboard – I combined different shots from our multiple storyboards as described above. This storyboard had too many different shots so was later cut down into selective shots (a maximum of 10).

Below: Initial Animatic by Berni

https://artslondon.padlet.org/skhodabocus0120241_1/out-of-your-head-animatics-tests-43qx8dgnwbb026e5

In the animatic above, Berni took our selected shots and condensed them further to create a rough idea of the different scenes we could have for the 30 second duration.

As shown in the top left corner of the powerpoint slide above, I created a quick character design test. I was keen to use more desaturated colours as I thought this would create better contrast with the backgrounds (I planned to use vibrant colours for the backgrounds). Though our group collectively decided on a different stylisation (Berni’s), I was glad my test character helped inspire and shape our final design for the character Phool. Some features that were used were the mushrooms growing on his hat, the shade of his skin tone, his cream coloured beard and his rosy blush.

Our creature most likely will have a cooler blue toned colour palette – this will contrast nicely with the warm and cosy interior of the florist shop as well as our character Phool.

The slide above was a mood board I created to help inspire the way we designed our characters and environments. Cartoon Saloon has always been a major source of inspiration for me, I especially love the contrast of their characters which are quite simple and lineart based compared to their heavily detailed and pattern orientated backgrounds.

https://artslondon.padlet.org/skhodabocus0120241_1/out-of-your-head-animatics-tests-43qx8dgnwbb026e5

Above is a test I did with Anushka using ToonBoom – we did this to trial how we could do lineart and colour for the characters of our final animation.

Final Animatic : Drawn by Berni & Sound by Anushka

https://artslondon.padlet.org/skhodabocus0120241_1/out-of-your-head-animatics-tests-43qx8dgnwbb026e5

I was really happy with the final animatic Berni made above, I think the scenes and storyline are very clear to understand and the sound by Anushka really elevates our main character Phool’s emotions during the events that play out.

As the background artist, some elements of the animatic I will need to adjust when I render the different scenes, for example the placement of objects (so they match different scenes).

Background based Photography – by Sophie

Initially Ceren’s starting idea for our story was based in a garden. I had thought a florist shop could be more interesting and unique to design so I proposed this idea to the group. The main reason why I had thought of this was because of a florist shop I used to regularly browse around in Hebden Bridge.

I decided to revisit the florist shop ‘The Willow Garden’ to take some photography: