Quick tutorial with Jon and some more materials

Chatted with Jon briefly this morning about my ideas so far and it helped a great deal. He suggested that my idea might potentially be cutting it a bit fine in terms of complexity and time which is something I was really concerned about. Fortunately I do have a much more simplified version of my idea that he seemed to think would work much better - having Craig working away at his desk but constantly distracted by noises outside. Every time he looks up there's a different scene going on outside his window.

He liked my early cutout puppets and suggested that I carry on working with them a bit more, adjusting the feet and back of the side-view head to clean it up a bit. He gave me some ideas in terms of building backdrops, layering photographs and fitting them together, perhaps using pixilation techniques for some of the live-action scenes.

He suggested putting together some mood boards in my sketchbook to help establish the visuals for my animation, looking at Stanley Pickle and the British Gas TV commercials for some inspiration in terms of aesthetics.

It's very similar to what I've put together so far, and it sounds strange but I find looking at the necks and heads really helpful. The problem I had with the side-view puppet was trying to fit the neck to the head without it looking peculiar. I just sort of stuck a skinny pole up through the chin and cut off the back of the head, so it looks a bit odd. I can use these commercials to get more of an idea on how I should build my puppets.