Reflection

For this project I really struggled to come up with a solid idea, it took me a good couple of days for my idea to form. I guess I was thinking more inside the box in terms with this monkey idea, I wasn’t thinking abstract, and I think that’s the best way to go with a piece like this. I then suddenly remembered “Donkey Kong Country” on the old SNES system, and thought about creating a platform game with me dressed up as a monkey, and making my short a live action piece, with a mix of emoticons and sprites from old and iconic games from the 90’s. This idea then changed when I realized how hard it would have been to film in the style of a platform game, as I don’t have access to a dolly of any kind, and by doing it free hand it would have looked too shaky, and would have been too hard to animate in post production. So with that idea being scrapped I then collected a large amount of sprites from the internet, finding some good monkey sprites which wasn’t difficult, as a managed to find some from the “Yoshi’s Island” video games on the SNES. From then on it was creating the scene in After Effects, and using Photoshop to manipulate certain sprites and elements, such as the clouds, gravestones, and the bananas. I would then create the typical platform game look, by having the background scroll to the left, whilst having my little monkey image float up and down, dodging certain obstacles while trying to attain bananas and get through the level in one piece. One of the hardest things about this piece was key framing, every split second the monkey was key framed, as it had to look like someone was actually controlling this character, being part of the video game genre. If I could start this project all over again, and have had a bit more time to complete it, I would have had made sure that my sprites and emoticons were all designed by me, and were not from previous video games. All in all I was very happy with what I created in the time frame we had, and learnt a lot from such a simple idea, which eventually turned into a big process.

Do All Monkeys Go To Heaven?

AND NOW..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPwhAMFUz_8

FINAL LAP!

Here is an obstacle I have designed for the monkey to try and dodge. This obstacle will be the final obstacle in my feature.

SUPER MONKEY POWER!

Like in Super Mario Bro's, when Mario gets a Mushroom he normally changes form and gains power. In my feature when the Monkey gets a multicoloured Banana he will duplicate in size and will be invincible for a short period of time.

Here is an example.

Introduction shot

Here is another screen shot for my feature, this one is a final shot from my piece.
I still have a lot to do, but it's very interesting trying to re-create the look I am going for.

Reset reality

Here is a sample of how things will look.