- Feelings Down? - Don't make decisions you'll regret because you're sad, come talk to us
- Get Tested. - If you're sexually active you should have a HIV screening every three months
- Visit a clinic - If you think you've exposed yourself to any sexually transmitted diseases go to a clinic to get tested.
- PEP. - if you think you've been exposed to HIV then ask your doctor for pep.
- Drugs and alcohol - don't let these things fuel you to engage in unsafe sexual activities that you otherwise wouldn't have.
- Anal Sex - you don't have to have it. Make sure it's what you want.
- Use a condom - Speaks for itself really.
So I was not the only person to decide they liked this project and as a result I am working with Laura, Shannon and Molly on this one. So we began by dividing work load. Molly and I are both working on other projects and I'm not entirely sure what else Laura is doing although I'm sure she's also working on something else. But Shannon, however does not have any other projects and so it only seems fair to allow her to do three of the 7 films. Then Laura took 2 and Molly and I both chose one each.
I chose get tested. I had no plan behind this other than I thought I could be quite creative with the motive of the character in my film.
So from here I began to accumulate information about GMH, as much of it as I could. After three years of university I think I have finally discovered the way I work best. Which has allowed me to sculpt my time far more efficiently this semester because now I know I work best when I can absorb knowledge about my subject matter like a sponge before I have can make a decent anything from anything. I mean sure it's a little irritating knowing that I can't just start something. But similarly I am aware that I have all the knowledge at my disposal once I have discovered and read through it all. It scares me at times because a lot of the time days can pass where I feel like I'm getting nothing done but that's only because I'm busy preparing my mind for my animation. It's my process and I'm not going to say I do anything differently.
So through this bizarre knowledge accumulation process I usually create an online sketchbook in which to gather up my references and ideas. From what I like the look of to things I've seen done before to things I just need to be aware have happened before. I put them all here;
This pinterest board started with me looking at ways to make this look like a slick 2D, flash pr photoshop animated piece that I could actually make the old fashioned way, under a rostrum or with physical puppets. Taking into consideration animations such as an add campaign for vodaphone's text donation service. However I very quickly moved away from that when I read more into who gay mans health were and decided that anything other than a proper 2D photoshop animation wasn't going to cut it. There's something a bit rough around the edges about stop motion sometimes and that roughness lends itself beautifully to things that want to evoke uneasy. However here I knew GMH were a humorous charity with lots of raw language as well as being blatantly straight forward in their approach. In my head that just perfectly synced up with a colourful and simple 2D photoshop animation. I then began to find that this seemed to be the standard for this type of film and while I've never been one for adhering to standards in this case I agreed with the general consensus. I know none of us fancied building a giant paper mache condom. After I decided on technique I had a look at style before I thought about story. More often than not I work fairly backwards. I feel as though my story should influence the style but for me however it is usually the style influencing the direction my story takes. I think it gets my mind going to look at the options I have stylistically and then I can begin to think about the story. I was getting ready one saturday morning with the television on. On this particular morning I was watching teen titans go! Which is a show I really love and in that moment I was struck by how much I enjoyed the instances in the show where they really play around with their styles and the animation. These short sequences were colourful stylised and memorable and I loved them. I spent the rest of the day thinking about them so I took that as a pretty good hint that I should at least use them as a starting point for my inspiration for this project.
(Teen titan's go - Cut Scene)
So from here I began to look at other colourful and 2D characters I enjoyed the look of, while still looking for something fairly un complicated to work with. Recently I have found myself drawing less and less with a black outline and increasingly more with just block colour and this semester it's something I'm keen to keep working with. I'm just really feeling it, you know? No more justification needed! So I began looking at things characters and styles from apps such as dumb ways to die and Hopscotch - both apps have simple styles however dumb ways to die is far simpler than hopscotch. I knew from looking at them I wanted my characters to come somewhere between the two. Hopscotch was a little too complicated for this film as a lot of the characters there where animals that needed snouts and talks and fur and things to make them resemble the things they were meant to. I needed none of that. Yet dumb ways to die literally just has jellybeans in it. I'm almost 100% certain they are based on jelly beans. So I needed my characters to at least look human. Looking at the silhouette above I wanted something a bit more like that. Bright block colours with recognisable shapes. It may seem a bit odd to patronise a grown up audience with simple shapes and bright colours but part of me feels that with a subject as typically torturous as getting yourself tested for HIV it could actually be beneficial for it to remain interesting.
(Book of life, Dumb ways to die, Hopscotch)
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