RE

Idea

I haven’t blogged now for a few days as I still didn’t have an idea of what i wanted to do with this particular project. I took a visual of most of the Re- words I was interested in and tried not to think of any ideas. This may seem backwards but I did this as sometimes if I am constantly thinking of an idea then none will come to me. Sure enough my idea came when I was least expecting it! I had been really interesting the word Re-Create as I thought this could be fun and create some really interesting outcomes.

Basically the idea came to me as I was sat in my girlfriend’s house watching creature comforts, a Nick Park production. It consists of many plastacene animals in funny situations, talking about random but funny topics. Nick Park is Famous for creating the hugely successful line of Wallace and Gromit animations and Chicken Run to name a few. He has won many awards for his animations as they are funny and fantastic aesthetically and fun for all the family.

A Few weeks previous to watching creature comforts, I had been shown a behind the scenes DVD of Futurama and to my astonishment I found out that it is actually modelled in 3D and made to look 2D. I couldn’t quite believe why they would go to so much trouble to model all the characters and sets in 3D then make it 2D. I didn’t think much of it after that, other than telling all my mates that it was 3D and they couldn’t believe it either. By pure chance ITV Midland had technical difficulties and couldn’t show one of their programs so that’s how I came to watch creature comforts. This then started me on thinking why people would bother spending hours and hours making plastacene models and animating them frame by frame. Surly it would be a lot easier to do it in 3D and it would look better too?

I then started to think about all of the 3D television programs of this funny nature that I knew of or watched. I couldn’t think of one! I think the only one I know of is the new Captain Scarlet for children, but I’m not even sure about that. So this leaves me with the question of why there aren’t many or any television programs shown in 3D?? From the Simpson’s to Futurama, from Family Guy to Creature Comforts and from Chicken run to American Dad.

To find out some of the answers for my project I plan to write a letter to the creators of the Simpson’s and to nick park himself. I know the chances of receiving a letter back is slim to none, but I think it is defiantly worth a try, after all you never know. I don’t know exactly what I will ask, but it will be along the lines of why haven’t they moved with the times and why they think people love their particular format of animation.

Added to this I want to ask the viewers of these particular programs and more, if they like the format and if it was 3D, how would this change the show to them. Along with this I will also research certain areas around the different formats of animation.

I don’t just want to find out all of this and have a research based project, I also want to try and Re-Create a scene from Creature comforts but in 3D. I will model a particular scene as close to the plastacene animation as possible, even using the original sound track. I want to see if the 3D version is as fun to watch?? And maybe my own view would change if television programs where all in 3D.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 10:45 AM