Where to put you. Even though we were told we HAD to put The University of Lincoln's logo in the movie somewhere; I didn't want it to get in the way of me and Thax telling a wonderfully short/goofy little story in our timeframe. I wanted to do something pretty descreet, as an Easter egg that was in the movie for anyone out there avid enough to find it. I felt that this not only creates a really fun little short for those not interested in finding it; but also for those avid enough to want to root for it, it would set a mild challenge fun enough for them to try and find it out! so we always had a solid idea of using the actual logo and not warping it, or imposing it or actually creatively messing with it at all, but instead we would put it into a glass jar, as what would appear to be an experiment. Scientist + Head-in-a-jar seems quite a rudimentary thing to have in there to tick all of the boxes we wanted to tick to create the atmosphere of the film and the genre we were trying to fit.
So before we actually decided in production to create all of our layouts in Autodesk Maya, we did some 2D concept artwork, that I originally sketched out and designed, and Thaxnay digitally reiterated it with some colour, and this is long before we even decided to make the film entirely in grey scale format; so it's very early days!
This is Thaxnay's first digital reiteration.
My original sketches.
Whilst modelling the Maya set, we decided we would go for a smaller jar, as so it would not take up so much of the frame for the particular shot we were putting it in, as it wasn't the main focal point in the frame. Below is the finished shot, which is when The Scientist pushes the lever, setting the rest of the story in motion, the Lincoln Minerva sits nicely on the right hand side of the frame in the bottom corner, but disappears into the frame of action when the lever is pushed forward, so instead of having to play the film back, i've taken a frame out and pointed it out for you.
