3/3/2016 - Butteam After Feedback

Today we had to discuss our final selected story idea with the lecturers. This was for us to know where we could make initial improvements, get ideas with how we could go about story telling, and character projection.
The main point was that the design of the Butter character would be crucial towards telling a more compelling story, even if it is a short comedy. Would the character have limbs? Because he was a stick of butter, we were told to think carefully about what factors could impact the design into expressing the character's feelings to the full potential.
There was a reminder about last year's Flower Sack assignment -  getting an inanimate object and giving it anthropomorphic qualities. Line of action would be a skill to look out for a lot when it comes to body language. One of the lecturers also asked, "Will the butter be...naked?" (...) This gave us ideas of using the butter wrapping as "limbs" rather than actually giving him actual limbs. The fire character Calcifer from Howel's Moving Castle was an example given to us regarding a character who usually has no limbs. Calcifer's fire morphs into arms at times, giving more space to express himself.

Look at them arms

Jerwin also reminded us that characters from Beauty and the Beast didn't have actual limbs, but certain aspects of their "bodies" were made to act as them. 

Another point made was that the puns were too broad topic-wise: he should only make butter/dairy puns so that it makes more sense. Also, we might have to cut down the amount of puns included to fit the entire animation within the 30-40 second limit. 

From these notes, I think I should probably make a moodboard filled with references to different character which share the anthropomorphic trait, along with some actual butter to see what I can do with it >.> Jerwin and I also decided to either get actual butter and craft some concepts with it, or just try using clay instead if it sounds like it will get too messy.