It also began as an idea for a movie, something to mesh traditional art and digital art, and something totally different.
I started thinking of concepts for The Big Picture in December of 2004, when I found out I was going to go back to finish school. My first inspirational illustration shows what kind of ideas were forming early on in the project.
In January 2005, I started to develop the basic storyline and concepts of the project. I concentrated on how I took notes for movie ideas, I started to develop a sense of storyboarding and dived into creating a character. The character, if there was to be one, would barely be seen.
I started by making storyboards and concept posters... These were the important deciding factor in how big of a project I was really going to get into. I was able to draw the movie into four parts, and visualize how big this project could be.
In February 2005, a couple friends installed a camera rig in my closet.. from there I started taping myself drawing. The drawing table I had setup was a glass table with lamps shining up from underneath. The glass would get really hot, and would actually hurt to draw on... lesson learned. The entire drawing process from camera rig to completion is available here.
March 2005 was committed to drawing and creating the video, along with solidifying the plot and the overall storyline.
April 2005 I finally started to see this project come together, as Chris C. began editing the raw video. It took a second to figure out the best way to edit the film, as well as if we were going to add narraration in the movie clip as well.
By this time, the very first idea of this project (a huge movie called The Big Picture), had turned into the first phase of the entire film. I was graciously talked down from the big idea, to a much smaller, compact project which I could finish in two months.. without freakin out, without being overwhelmed.
So in the end I think that was the best thing that happend to the project, was the focusing in on the important matter at hand. In this case, the matter at hand was for me to graduate. That was the most important thing, get the project done so on April 29th, 2005 I can present this project and graduate.
The website, musical score and dvd were the final pieces of the project.