Rough Timing Layout

Set to a small section of Mozart's Claniet Concerto in A

0.12 – Maera emerges from coral and seaweed
0.26 – Twisting dance sequence
0.30 – Looks around for something else to dance with
0.38 – Comes up with an idea! Hooray!
0.42 – Starts making a fish
1:05 – Fish is created , choreographed dance sequence
1:20 – One friend isn’t quite enough
1:30 – Makes jellyfish
1:40 – Makes another fish
1:45 – Choreographed dance sequence with the fish and jellyfish
1:53 – The fish swim down into the seaweed
1:57 – Maera beckons them back up
2:01 – They swim down again
2:06 – She makes another 2 fish
2:16 – All the fish swim away
2:19 – Choreographed dance for Maera alone
2:29 – Others start to come back
2:30 – Maera dances faster, making more fish and jellyfish
2:39 – Maera creates an eel
2:47 – Eel dances around Maera
2:53 – Short choreographed dance sequence
2:59 – All the fish swim up (choreographed)
3:03 – Fish swim down in choreographed lines
3:07 – Maera dances above the rest
3:09 – Main choreographed dance sequence
3:27 - End

More Maera

Just two new pics of Maera, one of her showing how she takes on the colouring of those around her, and another of her creating a fish, hurrah!

The Story....so far

As this film is going to be experimental and isn't based on a script there's not really going to be a time when I have to pin down a story. But it's good to have a basic idea of what I want to happen in the small space of 2.5mins.

The whole basis of this idea was that i could just create something beautiful and flowy, set it to music, have Maera dance, and it would all be beautiful. But I just couldn't help developing just the smallest bit of storyline to help it along. SO! I'm kinda taking an approach where Maera is creating the sea life around her so that she can dance with them. I think the actual creating bit will be really lovely if I can do it. I've drawn out how i think some of the animation would go, but I'm yet to quickly test it in flash just to see. But here's a very rough picture of Maera creating a jellyfish.



There will be more to come, hopefully some rough animation tests to get the idea across, stay tuned

Maera

Maera is the name I gave to my mermaid. I've been drawing a bit more of her, though not as much as I would have liked due to illness, but I'm on the mend now and so able to upload a few things. Her design is subject to change, though I like how it is at the moment. The eel-like tail allows her to swim with the classic mermaid look without having a anatomically incorrect fish tail (which just gets to me) attached to her.

I chose all very sea-like colours for her, as I want her to be seen as belonging to the sea. Her top was originally much more detailed and sea-weedy, but for animation it was going to be easier to simplify it a bit, and just keep it that colour. So here's just a flat colour design of Maera.



I actually think she looks a bit stumpy in this now that I look at it, probably because I ran out of space on the page haha.

Another cool thing about Maera is that when she's interacting with things a different colour to herself, she takes on thier hue ever so slightly.