Gourdon Yamsee

"If comedy, in all its changing shapes, has one overriding preoccupation, it is ...that we resemble beasts more closely than we resemble gods, and we make great fools of ourselves the moment we forget it"
Howard Jacobson

Ugh I spent the whole week fixing the animatic and I put it together with my editor Sophie Rippington. I really hope I can get done with the animatic so that we can focus on making the movie look pretty and interesting. We are starting animating soon, so I better pick up the pace and get stuff done.
Louis Cook from Aardman came to give us feedback last week and I got to say I was pretty confident after the first time he saw out animatic, considering he had a laugh and all the tutors seem impressed of it.

Oh boy I was wrong

The day after, on the individual tutorials, Mr Cook destroyed the movie bit by bit. He wasn't mean, actually he was very helpful. but the feeling of having to re do every single suicide gag to make it more interesting...ugh...it just killed me! ahahaha!

Worked a lot on the second half of the week, since I had an awful fever at the beginning, but luckily Leo fed me and covered me in blankets until I was good as new!

I am not very worried about the animation at this point, what really scares me are very quick spiders and the bloody dissertation

Well wish me luck

also

Boo, happy all saints day and halloween

Omg my body hurts pls help

Man this two week has been heavy.
Saying that I am dead tired is an understatement.
Me and Sophie Rippington finished the animatic, added the scratch sound and all the frames: it came out about 4 minutes. The tutors seemed a little worried for the lenght but my lead animator James White said we might be able to finish it by March. Now, in terms of animation he knows a lot more than I do, so I am quite happy with that. Apparently the movie is quite long but it's not animation heavy as it might seem: James suggested we should over animate the whole thing, making it look A-mazing.
I said ok let's do it.
Some second years approached us asking to work on the project: so far we got two extra animators and one character/enviroment designer. I am trying to keep the group relatively short so that the style might remain consistent and it is definitey easier to produce.

I have been busy working on Salomone turnaround and the animatic's pictures (about 200)

Here you can see the guide to how to draw his dumb face properly

Once everything was done I worked on a color chart for the movie, I used a Pixar book about color charts (couldn't go more specific than that) as reference.

Let's not forget the silly promotional posters I did for advertising Falling in Love!

Other people are currently working trying to get the style right and doing animation shots. I am quite excited and looking forward to see them!

I also drew an imp while Sophie was working super hard

Falling in love: a romantic black comedy

I pitched my 3rd year idea and it went through! I am so happy that I will be able to develop it with a team of animators!

Falling in Love is a romantic black comedy that revolves around suicide. Our main protagonist, Salomone lives in Italy around the 1990 and he is living a sad existence: his daily routine is dull, his life colorless and plain. After gathering courage he decides he wants to kill himself

Unluckily/luckily for him, life has a stronger grip on him than the knot around his neck: Salomone's suicides attempts always fail ending up only hurting him.

Jumping in front of trains, running into buildings on fire, leaping off bridges, overdosing on viagra, Salomone just can't kill himself! He desperatly tries to end his misery until he notices Maria in a flower shop while eating poisonous flowers.

Maria is a young woman in mourning whose face is signed by many tears. Salomone forgets about killing himself for a minute, until the flowers kicks in and makes him pass out.

Back to his apartment, Salomone is sadder than before and demotivated. He decides to jump from the roof of the building where he lives for a certain demise.

He rushes upstairs and is about to jump, until he stops to look at the gorgeous sunset on the sea.

The sweet breeze calms his nerves and the wind blows the surrounding trees creating a delightful sweet synphony. Salomone smiles...maybe it's worth living another day...

he is about to leave when he sees Maria on the bulding in front of his: he tries to catch her attention waving like a madman, but the girl completely ignores him and jumps. Salomone jumps after her, without even thinking.

Salomone speeds toward her trying to grab her hand: Maria face is covered with tears. When Salomone reaches her he imagine how life could have been together.

Maria looks up and sees Salomone's face: despite the situation he seems happy. She is confused at first but smiles back and hugs him harder.

The two of them speeds down, swirling like in a dance, until they hit the floor and die after the fell in love

So far my team can count

Leonie Isaacs as producer

James White as lead animator

Leigh Juggins

Annah Bohac as animators

Dan Bowhay as Sound technician

Rob Owen as special effects guy

Sophie Rippington as script helper and background colorist

We'll probably need some more animators and background artists, but so far we are hella good