Final rewrite ... edited

This is very close to the final story i'll be going with. The story has changed quite dramatically and I fell it is now better rounded and more complete. From now on i'll be focused much more on modelling the scenes, then getting them as photo-realistic as i can. Here is the story the animation will be based on. I have been doing a lot of trials in mudbox and have got close to a realistic looking bird.

Shot 1:  close shot. A shiny metal nut is lay in some grass, a beak comes into shot and picks the nut up.

Shot 2: Interior nest. The magpie puts the nut on a nail inside a bird box where he lives.

Shot 3: Medium Shot. 2 flashing rings are on the ground; a beak comes into shot and picks 1 up.

Shot 4: Interior nest. The magpie also puts the ring on a nail, then looks at it intently, the magpie eat an insect of the floor as he does so without taking his eyes from the ring.

Shot 5: close shot. Quick shot of a beak picking up the second ring.

Shot 6: Interior nest. 2 rings are on the wall inside the nest not flashing, the magpie pecks each ring to make them flash then sits on its perch eating from a container.

Shot 7: Interior nest, point of view. The rings stop flashing and the magpie looks outside, it sees two magpie’s flying through the sky on a sunny day he also sees a female magpie looking back at him.

Shot 8: Point of view. Looks out of the nest after looking at the female magpie and spots a shiny trinket, ignores the female magpie and swoops for the trinket.

Shot 9: Montage. A series of shots shows the repetition of the lights going out on the rings, the magpie getting bored; looking at the other birds and bringing more and more trinkets back to the nest.

Shot 10: Internal bird box. Shot of the magpie dropping the last of a series of trinkets into the nest, camera fades to black.

Shot 11: Internal bird box. Shot fades from black to show the magpie having gained weight and the sparkle gone from his eyes. The magpie is trapped in the nest unable to leave because of the amount of trinkets he has collected. The magpie dips his head and lies still; the camera fades to black and temporarily stays black. This keeps the audience wondering if the magpie is still alive.

Shot 12: External bird box. A healthy female magpie spots the trinkets in the nest. (One of the reasons the male magpie gains weight is so the viewer can distinguish between the two birds) It’s a bright sunny day giving a contrast from inside and outside the nest. The female magpie attempts to remove a trinket from the nest.

Shot 13: Internal bird box. The male magpie squawks and flaps it’s wings, he is angry at the attempt to remove his treasure. The shot is lit by a dusty shaft of light; the overall light is low as is any colour. There is a brief struggle between the birds and the female removes the trinket she wanted.

New shot: As the female bird returns for more trinkets the male magpie notices and glint in her eye, the shot slows to focus on the females eye sparkling in the sunlight. As a result the aggression of the male lessons and his intrigue in the female bird grows.

Shot 14. A montage shows this struggle happening again and again with the female removing more and more trinkets a series of cuts shows the trinkets dropping to the floor. As more and more trinkets are removed more and more light enters the nest. By the end of the montage there are no more trinkets except the ring. The female returns to the nest with food, the male magpie reluctantly takes the food. The male magpie nudges the final ring to the female bird and she takes it from the nest. Camera fades to black.

Shot 15. Circular pan. The camera pans around the empty bird box, the camera leaves a blind spot in the centre of the nest that the viewer cannot see.

Shot 16. Wide shot. The female is in a tree alone sitting on a branch. The male magpie returns looking healthy with fluff and straw in his beak. The female removes some fluff from his feather before they both fly out of shot.

Shot 17. Cuts back to the nest with a fixed shot of the nest containing and egg with each bird either side of the egg. The male is adding to the nest surrounding the egg with straw.

Shot 18. Camera zooming out. The camera zooms out of the nest as the egg is cracking. The camera pans from the nest to outside the nest showing the ring above the doorway on a nail, flashing.

Shot 19. Credits. The credits show over the top of a pile of trinkets that have been removed from the nest nearby male and female can be heard squawking with the sound of the egg cracking. An additional baby squawk adds to theirs as the camera fades to black and the animation ends.

Basic Modelling

I have started to box model a magpie, here is the progress so far.

And here is the reference image I used to model it, it took around 3 hours to get the model looking right.

The current model has been kept really simple so it can be imported into Mudbox. Mudbox will allow me to add a high level of realistic detail I am looking for, of course I need to add wings yet.

There is a script called mFeather that allows for the recreation of accurately moving wings, I will be looking into how to use that over the nest few days as it doesn't look straight forward. The wings and tail will all have to be fully rigged allowing me to animate them realistically. The link to mFeather on creative crash is here:
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/misc/c/mfeather.

I will be either blocking out or producing an animatic for the animation as I am having trouble visualising certain cuts. This process will hopefully refine the story to something that can be used and allow me to begin modelling the various parts of the scenes. I will be using two main scenes; inside the bird house and an external shot of a tree that the robin will be in. The book i have previously mentioned; Ideas for the animated Short recommends keeping the number of scenes to a maximum of 2 or 3 for a short animation.