Sequence

book opens-

Tuba-Goose

Chapter One/

Probably a Goose

-page-

once upon a time

there was probably a goose/

animated illustration

-page-

there were probably lots of geese

and this goose was no exception

but he didn't know that/

animated illustration

-page-

because he was just a goose/

animated illustration

-page-

a human thing was around

and that's what he thought he would be

because there was no one who said that he couldn't/

animated illustration

-page-

so he did/

or he tried

-page-

and he left geese behind/

to show people a goose with a tuba

-page-

Chapter Two/

Of Geese and Men

-page-

pop up establishing shot

-page-

down streets

through  doors

up aisles

-parallax transition-

to places where people go

-parallax transition or page turn-

but what he expected to see is not what people do (dolly zoom)

-page-

with valves and chambers left open

which geese never thought to protect

tubas and dreams dent and ding

impractical things you'll forget/

animation

-page-

Chapter Three/

Acceptance (animation)

-page-

(missing scene)

-page-

once shiny and new becomes heavy and cold

a weight around his neck

in reflection he can see what he really must be

in life he's only a goose

-page-

with a bow that would say

he was bigger that day

when he knew how heroes lose

with relief and pain

in a quiet refrain

a tuba fell to the ground

/

with his dream in the dirt his steps were free

flapping wings he forgot were there

(over an illustration of a tuba on the ground with a flapping sound about 10 seconds into the page or ideally with eye tracking on the words)

-page-

Not a star in the sky

but untethered geese fly

to a home for a goose gosling and gander

Illocution, Perlocution, and Primitive for the Acceptance Chapter

Illocution: Tuba-Goose is not a goofy comedy or a fairy tale, it is a metaphor for the dissonance one feels when they realize their limitation through failure to attain a dream. It is a personal message to the adults to remember the moment when you realized that you could not be anything, if you try hard enough, and a foreshadowing to the child audience.

Primitive: I want the story to transition from a tongue and cheek story about a goofy character into an embarrassing failure in the real world. The primitive I want to incorporate is the uneasy feeling the audience feels watching someone bomb on a stage, evoking the embarrassment someone feels watching a performer try to do something that they are unwilling to accept that they do not have a skill for.

Something Big from Found Footage Festival on Vimeo.

Perlocution: The audience's embarrassment turns to sympathy and a recognition of the humanity of the goose when he that he has failed (i. e. identification with the protagonist).

I planned to shoot ComFest, and local shows for looking for footage of an uncomfortably bad public performance in which to add the Goose. I have some performances that are pretty awkward and mortifying, but what I have needs audio to work, and I can't think of a way to integrate it into the form.

New Animatics for Pages 5 and 6

The timing is more than a little rough, but it seems to work.
The first pair could loop, and though I had not done it when I made this animatic, I could have the camera and the text "to show people" start following the "tuba" and track into a repeating loopable backdrop.

Shots from the Missing Climax/Resolution

The Key Points of Speech Act Theory

I found one of the best summaries of the points of Speech Act Theory in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language.
visible off campus here.
Devitt, Michael, and Richard Hanley. The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Pub, 2006. Internet resource.


It also mentions P.F. Strawson who I was excited to learn thought "most illocutionary acts involve not an intention to conform to an institutional convention but an intention to communicate something to an audience". Unfortunately, after further investigation , it appears his research was not going into a direction that would be useful in the creation of a logical structure based on linguistics. 

"there is no requirement to map ordinary language onto artificial logical structures, nor does that capture ordinary meaning anyway. "  
-Strawson (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strawson/#Lan)
"his slogan that ordinary language has no precise logic". 
-Strawson  (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strawson/#Lan)

Prototype for Pages 1 to 4

Foliage Text and Animated Illustration for the First Page.

Approaches to the Animated Vine Text from Curves

The animated vine text is created by attaching an FX brush stroke to a curve in Maya.
Each stroke had to be adjusted to grow, and fill individually for each letter, but I am duplicating the letters with only minor alterations to each incidence, so the process gets faster as I build the alphabet.

I started using the node editor to duplicate the strokes onto the new letters. I named the strokes and curves for each letter by placement and function. 

Most stems, arms, and typographic structures share a number quantized by strokes, but there are a few exceptions (see the image below). (e.g. the highlighted is LowRCurveOut1; Low= lower case, R = letter "R", Curve = as opposed to stoke, Out = left shape boarder for the most part each stroke of a letter stroke also has an In, a fill, and some have a foot), 1 the typographic components are numbered from left to right (the letter "r" has 2 strokes "m" has 3).

I made exceptions to my organizational structure for aesthetic reasons. The pages with the vine text are describing the goose in his natural environment so I wanted the growth of the foliage to have fluidity; the highlighted curves from letters "g" and "w" would have been made with 2 quill strokes, but the Roman alphabet I am using (a mix of Champ Fleury developed in 1529 by Geofroy Tory (Tory web) and Romain du Roi by Louis Simonneau (Simonneau, web)

I have all the letters animated for the first page "Once upon a time there was probably a goose".

I started running into problems rendering with mental ray a couple days ago.

I thought I had done something wrong in the Node Editor, but mental Ray does not seem to be working with the version of Maya 2016 I am using. The above image is a simple torus and plane with 2 different shaders and multiple light sources.

The the letters are working with Mental Rayin 2014, but the file with all the letters together will not load (it is a Maya ASCII, so it should). 2016 has been very problematic, especially in the lab. I often find that the selection tools will suddenly stop working, and the text will be a different size when I transfer the files into 2015 or 2014.

Rendered with Maya Software's render engine

Works Cited

 Tory, Geoffroy. Champ Fleury. Paris - Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Coll. Div., 1529. print/web. The diagrams I used are photographs of the book pages 34 to 140, available online (pages 23 to 76) through rarebookroom.org  http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/trychf/index.html

 Simonneau, Louis. Médailles sur les principaux événements du règne de Louis le Grand, the book is not in english, and I am still researching this source, unknown page, the diagram is from an image on the  web. more info https://archive.org/details/medaillessurlesp00acad

Rough Draft of the Animations for Pages 1 to 4

Page 1

Ivy text growing on the opposite page reads:

Once upon a time 

there was probably a goose

The user would turn the page with a swiping motion  to advance from the last frame to the next page.
***

Page 2

Ivy text growing on the opposite page reads:

There were probably lots of geese, 

and this goose was no exception

The user would turn the page with a swiping motion  to advance from the last frame to the next page.
***

Page 3

(this page will be hand drawn, the Photoshop image is just a prototype).

Ivy text growing on the opposite page reads:

But he didn't know that

because he was just a goose

The user would turn the page with a swiping motion  to advance from the last frame to the next page.
***

Page 4

Animated hand drawn typography (with a compass) on the opposite page reads:

A human thing was around

and that is what he thought he would be

The user would turn the page with a swiping motion  to advance from the last frame to the next page.

Madeleine L’Engle and Children's Capacity to Handle "Darker Matters"

Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time shares many of my views on the value of unsettling elements in children's literature.

Notes

 "fear of trampling on someone else’s toes, that was, alas, the way of the world"
-Madeleine L’Engle

"point of this parable" (Illocution)
"We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we’ll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them."
-Madeleine L’Engle

A good quote on censorship vs. discernment:
"The exercise of personal taste is not the same thing as imposing personal opinion."
-Madeleine L’Engle

"Fortunately, nobody ever told me that stories were untrue, or should be outgrown, and then as now they nourished me and kept me willing to ask the unanswerable questions."
-Madeleine L’Engle


Popova, Maria. "Dare to Disturb the Universe: Madeleine L’Engle on Creativity, Censorship, Writing, and the Duty of Children’s Books" Brain Pickings. n.p., Brain Pickings. n.p., Web. 19 Oct 2015. Web. 08 Aug 2016. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/10/dare-to-be-creative-madeleine-l-engle/
(The Publication date is unlisted, but the web address suggests either April the 10th 2014 or October the 4th 2014)

Playblast for the exposition

I have some dents to bang out, but this is my latest approach to the 2nd scene of the exposition

The orange is going to be the face of a brick building, the red is a door, and the green is a dumpster. I still have a lot of work to do in the timing, but it has the potential to read at a much faster pace than the other prototype.

Anton Ego Montage from Ratatouille and the Acceptance Sequence

I am having trouble getting what I want from the climax/resolution sequence.

A sequence with a similar interaction is the Anton Ego paradigm shift from Ratatouille.

The audience's perception of the character changes completely, in line with the characters paradigm shift.

Locution: Anton's eyes open wide, pupils enlarge; Dolly-zoom; Montage of Anton as a child, comforted by mother, eating ratatouille; Dolly zoom, cut to a shot of Anton dropping pen; close up of the pen; reaction shot of Anton in awe

Illocution: Anton is in awe of how powerfully the tasting experience reminds him of the comfort he got from his mother through her ratatouille, 

Perlocution: The audience identifies with the Antagonist, the power of the shift in perceptions is equated to the power of the emotional impact of the dish being served

Primitive: Build the character up as a villain then show him as vulnerable

page 1 layout prototype