Ident Concepts

The purpose of an ident is to help the audience identify a brand or channel. For example the idents for E4 or channel 4 are there to remind you what channel you're watching.
My job is to create an ident for the university.

-It has to be between 6-10 seconds (average duration of an ident)
- No dialogue (As there's usually a narrator voicing over the ident about the upcoming programme)
- Usually is accompanied with sound or sound effects.

 I was originally inspired by the ending to an anime I was watching before I altered my thought process. Below is the original inspiration. (Anime: Zero no Tsukaima (The Familiar of Zero))

 

I liked it because it still incorporated my experimental style of cutouts and it had been set out like a stage production. Everything was simple and a style like this would be easy to reproduce into an animation. The only aspect that halted this idea was the fact that I felt I had to come up with a story that centred around two characters. However with 10 seconds as a maximum duration it's almost impossible to deliver a good storyline.

 

 

I've now ended up keeping even closer to the original silhouette style than I originally expected. It's monochromatic but I think shapes are better defined if one colour is used. It also has aspects of a story which revolves around a boy who's out fishing, hooks something but loses his rod. As he looks over the side of the boat he sees a shadow emerging from the waters depths revealing the university logo.

Inspirational picture that drove me away from a cutout theatre- simple shapes create a good impact.

 

 

Below are the concepts I've created so far. (Both done in Photoshop)

 

 

Long Shot- Establishing the setting. This will be the opening shot.

 

 

Boy looks over the boat to see the logo rising from the depths. The camera will tilt down and pan up from this shot so the logo looks as it should on the webpage.

 

It's a very simple design and shouldn't take too long to do. I plan to use either Flash or Toon Boom to create it because a) it's going to be 2D and b) I plan to create it in the same way I did the lip sync animation in Flash by splitting the body apart so I can create basic body movement.