Back To The Drawing-Board

Right... well a week or so on from my last post and I have decided to ditch my idea all together!!

I'm just not as enthusiastic about it as I was when I started the project and I really want to produce a piece that shines!

If I can, I am going to stick with the garden theme as I have a couple of tools and a bit of a garden already modelled so it would be a shame to waste them :P

Unfortuntely, I don't have any ideas as of yet so its back to the drawing-board, but as usual I'll keep you posted.

Filling In The Gaps - My Project Once More

After a week or two playing around with ideas of what my spade might want to sing about I basically came up with two which seemed to stand out as the strongest.


Idea 1: Carry on with the original idea

My original idea wasn't that bad (in my opinion). By altering it towards the mind-set of a spade, I thought it should work better. I decided to ditch the daydream of him driving a car and instead, want to be a big JCB digger! - Being sick of the mundane life of a spade in the garden, he would fantasise about the wonderful life of a JCB: The huge loads they can lift at one time, the shiny glossy yellow finish, the"wow" they get from children as they pass by, being one if not THE most important part of a building team!

Interestingly, through my research into the thought processes of spades and this first idea, I came up with a second!

Idea 2: 'The grass is always greener'

I thought it would be really cool to do the original animation (idea 1) but from a two point perspective... The garden spade would daydream about the fast-paced, exciting life of a big JCB digger, and on the other hand the JCB would daydream about the simple, relaxing life of being a spade.

I do like this second idea, but the problems I have with it are that I would have to lose the original soundtrack (from idea 1) and also come up with an ending that would be either interesting or funny! I'm still unsure as to how original this idea is too. Hmmm...

Filling In The Gaps - My Project

Taking into account all that had been said by Jen and in my end of term review (which seemed to go ok :D), I knew I had to expand on my original idea...

I had to almost put myself into a mind-set of a spade and ask myself:

What is my background? - Where did I come from? - Have I only been in this garden?
Am I a new spade, or an old one? - Wise or a bit dippy?
What are my goals in life?
etc...

The most crucial question was; If I could be anything, what would I be?

You'd think these would be simple questions to answer, but coming up with interesting ideas that would make my piece more original was extremily difficult!!

Filling In The Gaps - Dissertation

I haven't been on here updating my blog for quite a long time now!! Over the next few posts ill try to sum up where I have been and what's been going on:

Well I got my dissertation handed in... just! I had a complete nightmare with it, as my laptop crashed and corrupted pretty much everything I had on it (including my dissertation, the emails from Mark Griffith and the papers he sent me)!!!


After nearly 3 days of using about half a dozen recovery packages, I finally gave up and realised I would have to re-write the thing! I had done well over half of it, and believe me it was gut wrenching having to do it from scratch again!! One week later I managed to finish it just in time for the hand in (thank god I still had all the notes from Mark Griffiths lecture as I would have had no primary research otherwise)!!

I can safely say I learnt the lesson "ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK!"