Investigation Blog Post

 This blog post is going to be about my several inspirations for the animated short film that I am creating. However one of the inspirations will be a broad inspiration for myself taking the class this year and a general inspiration for me and I will also be talking about some inspirations specifically for the animation. 

John Lasseter

John Lasseter started his path to being one of the most revolutionary animators when he went to the California arts institute where he studied where he studied under some old Disney artists who knew everything there was to know about the principals of animation and were some of the first animation teachers ever.

after that Lasseter achieved his dream job of working at Disney as an animator but his ambition and need to evolve led him to a point where he experimented with creating the first digitally animated short film for Disney.  The officials at Disney did not like this idea however and feared that the age of 2d animation was passed endangering their steady money flow so they fired John Lasseter. John however was not discouraged and his expertise in the new field of computer animation got him a spot on a team at Lucasfilm's to work on revolutionary computer graphics and CGI. Eventually this division was sold to Steve jobs who turned it into a company known as Pixar.

Lasseter directed the first digitally animated feature length film toy story and many more in the future making Pixar one of the most well renowned and successful company's in the world.

John Lasseter although the themes of my work are far different than most of his has inspired far more than the animated short film I am creating this year. Lasseter is the reason I chose to make a film this year at all, he inspired me by the way he saw an opportunity to advance and even though got him fired he did not give up and it led to his eventually success. He inspired me to always be thinking about the future and how I will need to adjust everything I do to keep up with the everchanging and improving field of digital art so I thought I should mention him in this blog post.

Direct Inspiration 

ok so I have already talked about my overarching inspiration for the year so I thought I should talk about some other artistic works that inspired my for this work specifically.

(sorry the video is so weird and big it was the only way I could embed it into my blog)

Blind eye is a work that I recall finding on YouTube a while ago and rediscovered when doing my introduction blog post on the sacred realm. similarly to my animation also takes us into a religious nation that plans a brutal sacrifice on an innocent bystander, although it explores this theme in a very lighthearted almost comedic way which is something I do not plan to do. They both convey a theme of religions going way to far and paying the ultimate price for their unwarranted violence towards others. 

And lastly I thought I should mention the game Spelunky which has a dark path you can go on of sacrificing innocents to an alter  to receive rewards. In the game this has a more comedic theme like the short film Blind Eye mentioned above and is actually almost the opposite of my theme as you do actually receive rewards for these sacrifices. Either way If anything I really like the design of the things relating to it in the game and will probably take inspiration from it into my own.

weekly work

mon: conceptualization and story boarding

tue: conceptualization and story boarding

wed: conceptualization and story boarding

thu: fire and torch design and modeling

fri: fire and torch design and modeling

Image Links

https://spelunky.fandom.com/wiki/Altar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbUqloG6ZeU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaeTYAsV0fg

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8526930/toy-story-director-john-lasseter-metoo/

https://blog.calarts.edu/2014/08/21/the-calarts-brigade-arrives-gives-inside-look-at-disney-animators-during-the-80s/