I'd set aside some time at the weekend to go out and take some location photos for my animation short. As it's set in Africa I had intended to make a trip there but the funding never materialised, so I was forced to take the shots locally. Ideally, to make these shots any way convincing, they would have been taken in sunny weather. Having researched the African grassland on the inter web, I would say there are some similarities in these photos, but sunshine would have helped. There were some sunny spells on saturday morning but I was unable to get away and from around lunchtime it poured rain for the rest of the day. Sunday morning started off the same, a few sunny spells in between showers. I set off to my chosen location just as one of these showers finished, expecting another sunny spell to follow. Naturally, being Ireland, this didn't happen and it stayed overcast and a storm even began. I took as many shots as I could, considering the weather, and headed back. Not surprisingly the sun reappeared five minutes into my journey home.

These images have most of what I was looking for. Small trees and bushes. Some long grass, not enough though, and some rocky terrain. There was some exposed rock face on part of the hill where I got these shots but I couldn't get close enough because there was cows there (after all my research into how dangerous water buffalo are, I was a bit weary of the cows).The image above is probably the nearest to what I imagined the setting would be for the animation. The grass and shrubs are a bit too green but it has the general layout i.e. flat mid and foreground with a background of shrubs / small trees providing cover and shelter from the sun.

A few shots of how my opening scene might look as it will be a low-angle shot, through the long grass, from Leroy's perspective.

I Photoshopped some of the images to get a feel for how they might look in the animation. I think I'll have to return there on a sunny day and re-shoot these backgrounds, but overall the location is fairly o.k. for what I'm trying to portray.

With regards the characters in this animation, water buffalo and lions, I wanted to get some shots of cows, cats and kittens.

I wanted to get a low-angle shot of a cows head, as thats how the buffalo would look in some of the animation shots, but I wasn't going to take any chances with real cows (they can be killers) so I downloaded some for reference.

I thought I'd be able to get some shots of kittens playing for reference material. One of our neighbours cats has kittens so that would have been an ideal opportunity, but it proved impossible to get them all to stay in the one space for more than a few seconds, let alone play together. I don't know how David Attenborough does it.

I had to trim the story for my animation short as it was working out at roughly 6 minutes long. So I rewrote it and got it down to 3 minutes. It's a pity I hadn't checked the brief first though as the time limit is actually 3 1/2 minutes. But that's good as I was rushing the pace to fit it into 3 minutes, so I can allow a bit of extra time now. So this is the revised version. I'm still not happy with the ending, I keep feeling that the hero should die, but that's just my own personal preference (I don't like happy endings).

THE OLDEST LION (2^nd draft)

The crack of a dry twig snapping alerted them to his presence. ‘Looks like Leroy’s back again’ said Nimbey. ‘Why dat old fool have to come here every day?’ asked Molanni agitated. ‘Yes’ said the third lioness, Sinda,’He going to get us all killed wid all dat noise’. ‘Oh relax’, said Nimbey,’You know Leroy’s only tryin to make hiself useful, or he’ll get driven away by the others’. ‘Useful!...useful!’ cried Molanni,’how he gonna be useful? He aint got no strent, no roar, no claws an no teeth, what him gonna do? Suck sometin to death’.

It wasn’t long before the tranquillity of the group was disturbed by a loud, rasping fart.

‘Oh for de Lion King’s sake’ said Molanni. ‘Oh Molanni, he is old, and these days he has to eat Beeno Berries cos he gets no meat, and you know they cause de big wind’.

Another loud fart ripped through the air.

See?, diss is what I mean’, Molanni is getting more annoyed. ‘What we gonna do when sometin happen to de cubs an we’re all passed out from de stink? Nimbey laughs quietly, ‘Oh stop it Molanni, you are forgetting easily what a great leader Leroy was. Most of us wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him’. ‘And we won’t be here much longer if he keeps doing dat’ replied Molanni, ‘I just wish he would do what all de odder old lions do, and go off by himself and die’. ‘Dat’s right’ said Simba joining in, ‘he is being most selfish by staying here wid us and living’. Nimbey rolled her eyes in despair.

Meanwhile, in the long grass, Leroy has a problem…. ants. He had taken up position lying on the entrance to their nest, and they had been gradually crawling over his body. Now they were starting to bite. He started to crawl backwards until he felt the rough, jagged rocks he’d passed earlier. He began to rub his hindquarters against the rocks to relieve the itching caused by the bites. . A thunderous gush of hot air from above his head almost knocked him over. He slowly raised his head to see where it came from, only to be faced with a giant, upside-down, buffalo’s face. He looked back at his tail end and realised he’d been rubbing himself against the leg of the biggest water buffalo he’d ever seen. This was not good. Lions and water buffalo don’t get along at the best of times, so rubbing your buttocks against their legs is probably a bad idea. Leroy quickly swung around and backed up a little, smiling sheepishly. ‘Er, hi’ he said, ‘I suppose your wondering what I was doing back there?’ ‘Amaze me’ boomed the water buffalo, as he stared at Leroy menacingly. ‘It’s juss dat I thought you were a rock’, said Leroy, still smiling. ‘And you go around rubbing your buttocks against rocks?’ the buffalo asked, ‘Yes, yes…I mean no, only when it’s itchy’ Leroy was starting to get flustered, ‘I mean, I rub all of me against rocks….when I’m itchy, and I would have rubbed all of me against you only if….o.k., that’s not coming out right’. ‘Well now I’m going to rub all of my horns against your puny, pathetic old body. And then I’m going to do the same thing to dem lionesses and dem cubs. It’s not that I actually want to….dem  cubs is just so cute, but you know I have to’. ‘Yeah, and you know that I have to stop You’, replied Leroy. ‘Yeah, well, good luck wid dat’, said the buffalo.

Leroy knew he had to act fast. He called out to the girls, ‘GIRLS….GET DEM CUBS AN RUN’.  His stomach was rolling around with pressure by now, from the Beeno berries, and he sprang into action. He dived at the big bulls right horn and swung his body around its head, landing perfectly with his buttocks squarely over the bulls mouth. Holding on with his front paws on the bulls horns he strained with every muscle and tendon until his heart nearly burst. Finally the pressure inside his bowels erupted and the big bull started to shake, as his body filled with nauseous gases. The combination of Leroy’s gas and the buffalos own gastric juices caused a chemical reaction that was literally explosive. The big bull burst apart, body parts flying in all directions. Leroy, along with many chunks of buffalo, was propelled back towards the girls and cubs. He landed in the clearing where the cubs had been playing, and lay there motionless, in a heap of blood and guts.

The girls and the cubs had been hiding under the trees and made their way slowly to where Leroy lay. ‘Ohh Leroy’ sobbed Molanni, ‘you sacrificed yourself for us you silly old brave fool’. Nimbey and Simba were trying to hold the cubs back, along with their own tears. ‘Poor Leroy’ said Nimbey, ‘I knew he’d save us one day’. Simba just burst into tears. The babies didn’t know what was going on, though they were frightened by the big bang. The toddlers, on the other hand, were more curious and rushed over to Leroy’s body. The girls began nudging him with their noses, looking for some kind of reaction. The cubs wondered if he might be their next meal and started licking the blood and entrails stuck to his fur. Leroy couldn’t contain the laughter any longer, their tongues really tickled. He roared with laughter, ‘I did it!’ he yelled, ‘did you see? ‘Leroy, your alive’, Nimbeys tears turned into a wide grin. The others stopped crying and started smiling too. ‘I’m sorry for teasing’ said Leroy, ‘I wondered if you’d be sad if I died and I’m glad that you were, but I’m afraid you might be stuck with me for a while longer’. ‘Leroy!’, Nimbey had just realised something, ‘when we tell the others how you saved us, they will want you to stay with us every day from now on’. ‘Of course’, said Molanni, ‘if you have a useful role it means you can stay’. They all cheered and hugged Leroy.

THE END

I'm sure there will be more rewrites yet but it's enough to move on to the next stage.

 

After shortening the story for my animation - it was running at roughly 6 minutes - I began working on the characters to see how difficult it might be (working with clay). I managed to get the story time down to about 3 minutes which is the allocated time for this brief. Normally the story board would be the next step but in this case we have to mock up a poster for the short. As I'm thinking of making a claymation style animation I figured this should be shown in the poster. My earlier line drawing of the poster would have been misleading as it gives the impression of a hand drawn animation. For now the animation will be using clay characters filmed on a green screen background. A suitable background will then be added at a later stage, either drawn or photographed,or maybe built - time permitting.

Having a small amount of modelling clay, I began by creating the heads of the two main characters, the buffalo and the lion. They're the only two that I'll be making for the moment as they feature in the poster. They didn't turn out exactly as I imagined them but they're not bad. I think the buffalo's horns should be a more grey colour but I have to mix that yet. I think I might even make them out of filmo clay, along with any other parts that don't need to be manipulated, as it's hard things consistent working with clay.

I invested in a pearl necklace to get beads for the eyes. It proved difficult to get beads - for eyes - from anywhere other than the internet but the necklace should provide enough eyes for all my characters. I will make a set of teeth from film clay, so they will set and not keep changing when I'm moving the mouth & lips.

The lions head was easy enough to make but I'll have to make several different ones and keeping them all individual might be tricky. 

The lions body was o.k. to make. I used a few toothpicks here and there to join some parts together. Keeping the separate parts i.e. limbs and torso consistent will require either measuring everything and recording the measurements or maybe making molds of the separate parts to renew parts that go out of shape/size.

For the buffalos torso I joined two pieces of aeroboard packaging together, which was then wrapped in cling film to stop the clay from sticking to it. Using clay on its own would be far too heavy, and expensive. The box of playing cards in the photograph is just to indicate the scale I'm working to. It took three attempts to get the size right - reducing it to match the head, though this worked out well as I wouldn't have had enough clay to cover the original.

As I only have two blocks of black clay to work with at the moment, I had to create the illusion of a full clay body. The head used one full block, I've since learned that I should have used something light inside the clay to pack it out, and reduce the weight. Needing clay for the legs also meant that the torso 'skin' had to be very thin, I just about had enough to cover a direct front view.

For the legs I used 4 lengths of wire, about 2mm, inserted through plastic raw plugs - to save clay and add rigidity. These were then forced into the polystyrene body. As the model was unbalanced, due to the weight of the head and the 'skin', being all at the front, I had make a mounting base. For this I drilled holes in some MDF board and fitted the bottom ends of the leg wire into them. This was o.k. for the poster shot but I'll need to build an armature for the animation itself.

Fake fur from an old pair of slippers (not mine) came in handy for the lions mane.

These overhead shots reveal my cheat, as you can imagine the final camera angle had to be fairly exact.

This image had the background removed in photoshop, to use in the poster below.

I've put in an imported background for now as I have to make a trip to Africa to get some proper location photographs. I just hope there's some funding available?

 

 

 

Some of the images I researched for reference before making the characters. I think I need to make the buffalos horns a bit greyer and maybe make them rigid. He needs stiff horns (stop it) as the lion has to swing around one of them. I think Fimo clay can be set solid, so I'll make a mold for them and I can paint them to suit afterwards. I'll also have to make a more sturdy body for the buffalo so there's still a lot of research and planning to do.