FMP Blog Post 2: Pitching to the clients and my group

Prior to choosing the superheroes I wanted to focus on, I then had to make concepts for pitching to my group and the ITMA in what I would think they would look like in the animation. I came up with two concepts for each superhero that the ITMA would then choose to have.

Note: These are only two of each example for both superheroes. To view the rest, please read the concepts blog.

ITMA Man Concepts

The general idea for the ITMA man was to base it off of Pixar's Mr Incredible as he wore a red suit with a black mask, black gloves, black pants and black boots. Following up with this idea I had made the first concept as seen below.

The original idea based off of the sterotypical superhero who would have the triangular body with smaller legs and massive arms. I wanted to make this concept less like that as I first felt that it would be copying off of a lot of other superhero ideas. Self evaluating this, I felt that it needed more and therefore went onto designing the next concept shown below.

The "improvement" idea I came up with next was to improve on the posture. I had considered to replicate Mr Incredible's look as it felt the most suitable. I had also missed out on the fact that I needed to incorporate the ITMA's logo into these concept designs. I had emphasized the chin as the typical super man look consisted of a square face with a big chin. Prior to this, the concept then reminded me of Butch Hartman's design of a superhero called The Crimson Chin (obviously not making the chin as big as his!).










ITMA Girl concepts

Thinking more of the concepts for the ITMA girl, I had thought of DC's Super Girl and Batgirl to help me make designs for the ITMA girl.

This first design was based off of my imagination of what the ITMA girl would look like. Supposedly, I had thought about Super Girl's concept for the figure and the head based off of Dexter's Mom from Dexter's Laboratory as at the time, I felt that she could be a Mom character, looking after not only her family but also the IT marketing world's problems with care. Even though I felt that this design was good, I felt that I needed to make a second and get people's feedback.

This second design was completely based off of DC's Batgirl. I admired how the costume looked on her in the cartoons and wanted to incorporate it into this design, making small adjustments to areas. Because the ITMA Girl's power is flying, I designed the helmet that replicated Iron Man's armour plates and the wings on the helmet to look similar to Batgirl's cowl. The gloves were still kept the same length as the first design's and a skirt was added in. I had felt on the first design that the boots were too long and therfore settled with knee high's that looked similar to Wonder Woman's.









Storyboard

I had then come up with a storyboard to help portray the general story. After seeing the ITMA's own advertisement, I had a general idea of what I was going to produce. The first part would have the ITMA Man answer his communicator (supplied by the ITMA) to a call from a client in need of help. He would then activate his multi channel powers to then climb a mountain that would become a sales graph.

 The second part would then show the ITMA girl zoom in and recieve a mission. Because I felt that the design made her look part of a superhero team (much like Marvel's Avengers) and be given a mission briefing for the assignment to be carried out. To prove that she can fly fast, she would fly from Bedford area (where the ITMA is based) towards the destination that is quite far up north (Manchester or Newcastle length). The final screen would then show the ITMA characters and conclude.


Feedback from ITMA

I had successfully pitched these ideas to the ITMA and the following illustrated their thoughts.

They loved the idea of the characters with one resembling Mr Incredible and the other being female to equalize the gender. I had negotiated with making the advert be as little as a minute to as long as one and a half minutes and also for them to come up with a script for narrating the animatic and the animation.

Feedback from my group

I had done two feedback sessions with my group, one before showing my pitch to the ITMA and one before beginning production of the animation.

The first concept pitch and storyboard felt that it wasn't going to be a good pitch to do. The comments were that the ITMA Man's first concept looked sinister and less like a Superhero and that the ITMA girl's proportions didn't fit the description of her power. To this I felt that this pitch was unsuccessful but I had received feedback from my group for what to do before pitching to the ITMA a week later.

The second pitch, including the redesigned characters and the animatic of the animation was very successful. They had enjoyed what I was going to be producing and were grateful that I took their advice to redesign the characters on board. They could see that the animatic coupled with the script definitely helped to illustrate the story.