Our choice stopped on the Jewellery Quarter since it's Birmingham's' valuable heritage. First of all, we started mind mapping our ideas, searching for interesting facts, myths and legends. Based on those we wanted to create a tale of this place. We were so eager to start bringing this idea to life that after considering this with tutor we have realized that it was too far from reality and may be confusing to spectator. We came to conclusion that we must first visit the place, get all the inspiration and then decide on a decent idea.
Second, step was to pay Jewellery Quarter a visit. We stopped by Jewellery Quarter Museum, looked around for a while but did not find anything useful. It was a good thing that some tourists recommended taking a guided tour, it was a life savior. This was such an amazing experience! The guide explained how Smith & Peppers' shop was manufacturing jewellery. We found out a lot of interesting and hidden facts which probably not everyone's aware of. The guide in details told and showed us how every machine worked at that time, how people were devoted to their work.
This is just a mere fraction of images I took while was touring Jewellery Quarter Museum. These are my most favorite ones.
After taking part in this tour we wanted to share the gained knowledge with others and the best way to do that was to make an animation about it. That was our third step. We wanted to show, how the jewellery shop worked back then and concentrate on the small details, tell a story.
So our animation will start with a suitcase lock. The digits on it are going to start turning and changing from 2012 to 1910. That's the year when jewellery shops prospered. The camera will zoom out and show a man, who is going to the jewellery shop to order a necklace for his wife. As he enters the shop, we'll see an anchor symbol (next to the arch entrance) and the name of this jewellery shop which is "Smith & Pepper". The man will go up the stairs to the main office where he'll be greeted by Mr Smith (the owner of this shop). Mr Smith will knock on the table twice, that will be a signal for the lady to bring cake. She brings the tray and puts it on the table, when she starts leaving the camera is going to follow her to the next room (Mrs Olives' office). In there well see a woman packing whistles for Titanic, putting a stamp on the box and going to the next order. We're going to zoom out to the exterior of the building and move down to the first window of the first floor. There will be a man working on the jewellery, close up on his hands. After that the camera wil go up and see another worker entering this room. As he is headed to the workplace, the man is going to pass a sign, showing that all workers are not allowed to fold the bottom of their pants, as to prevent them stealing the gold. In the next workshop there will be men who are making final adjustments to the jewellery pieces. The third room will consist of women working on the stamping machines. At this time the camera will follow tea lady, who will exit the building and close the door with the sign 'end' on it.
We began our research from this particular animation piece. The style has caught our eye. Artist used pre-inked drawings, scanned them in and gathered all the pieces together like a puzzle. Those pieces began to look like a characters. Adding this animation a bit of shadows gave it depth.
As we continued searching for the animation style examples, we came across this one. We have really considered making a cut-out animation, but with the amount of backgrounds and characters, there was no way we could pull that out in the short amount of time.
As for the colour pallet, we wanted to go for the hand drawn coloured animation. We could not decide which media would be appropriate to use, and came to conclusion that instead of colours we'll use black and white ink. But there was one thing that was stopping us from
it: characters and the backgrounds could blend. When we saw this animation we stated, that sepia pallet is going to be our backup.
This amazing piece of animation shows superb, smooth transitions that could be useful to us. The black and white pallet somewhere allowing a third colour together with music really brings that dramatic chord.
Christina showed us a valuable black and white animation. That's when it was decided that we are going to use textures for the backgrounds and just an outline for characters.
This is the reference for the time period in which our animation is set up.
Fifth step, putting our thoughts on the paper - story-boarding My first storyboard is quite chaotic and you can't tell a character from a blob. The funniest thing is that I can clearly see and understand what's happening in every shot. Second one is much more precise.
The teamwork we had was outstanding. Duties were divided quite fast. Ewelina was in charge of characters, Christina - animatic, Mr Smiths' office and a workplace at the ground floor, I had to draw the rest of the backgrounds and a couple of characters.
That's the second edited animatic. We had to change the ending since our previos one was rather akward. So now animation is going to end with a transition from a small jewellery piece (an anchor symbol) to the one at the front entrance. To show not only the prosper of the shop itself but the growth of Smiths & Peppers dreams and ambitions which colud be applied to any of us.
Here is the final Jewellery Quarter animation!
There are always things to work on, but to tell the truth I wouldn't change a thing about this animation. Every part of is a memory of a teamwork, this animation includes those moments where we laughed the most, where we had trouble finding a solution or even cheated. No matter how many times I watch this animiation it brings a smile to my face.
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