The project is to make a short 3D animated movie using Blender in the form of a music video clip. The track is an original cut of one of my songs, Mend Me. The greater goal (aside traversing the learning curve) is as a viral promotional tool for my music and the track itself. Currently the track itself requires a lot of work:
- retrack the vocals
- add bass lines
- mix it all
- edit it to an achievable length for this project.
The rough, no-frills idea for the movie revolves around a story that has been passed down in my family, and I’m sure many others:
- Set in a country cottage in a valley
- Boy is playing in the yard till he sees a butterfly
- He chases the butterfly into the trees and continues until he is lost in a fantasy forest environment
- He comes to crossroads where he is greeted by some unusual characters that advise him to go down “The Right Path” to get back home
- The boy 1/2 listens but runs off down a track that has big strawberries
- He enters a lake area where he faces some sort of peril (creature or otherwise)
- After escaping he ends back at the crossroads
- This time he is about to go down The Right Path but sees the butterfly once again and chases it down another path
- The butterfly baits him to an enormous creature intent on eating him
- Somehow he escapes
- Finally he chooses The Right Path
- End song
So from that it seems like the story is one big plot hole… But then that’s what research and development are for. I understand that this story has been told in many forms and so in order to address/avoid/develop the clichés I need to study them. The following list of media is off the top of my head:
- Alice in Wonderland
- Peter Pan
- Never Ending Story
- Labyrinth
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
- Stardust
- Check the Grimm Brothers
- Aesop’s fables
- Puff the magic dragon