For one of my major projects this year I thought I’d attempt to complete a little idea I’ve had for some time now. The idea is about a character based on a song I heard as a young lad called “The Whistler” Performed by Jethro Tull. The idea was to be set in medieval times, a bard/minstrel who travels from town to town getting into various mischief along the way. On his travels he meets a small creature, who decides to tag along and play and perform as a duet with the Whistler. I intend to make this project as if it were an opening sequence to a small animated cartoon, I’m aiming for it to be no more than a minute and a half in total. I will be working with two other members of my year, Jack Elliott, Animation, Lukas Bilek, Modelling/Rigging and Bek Rootes, Environment/Modeller.

Who is Jethro Tull?
Jethro Tull are a British progressive rock group. Their music is characterised by the vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute playing of Ian Anderson, who has led the band since its founding, and the guitar work of Martin Barre, who has been with the band since 1969, after he replaced original guitarist Mick Abrahams. Formed in Luton, Bedfordshire, in December 1967 initially playing experimental blues rock, they later incorporated elements of classical music, folk music, jazz, hard rock and art rock into their music.  During a career that has spanned more than forty years, Jethro Tull have sold more than 60 million albums worldwide.

Ian Anderson as Jethro Tull lends himself to the minstrel look in this picture.

The video above is Jethro Tull in all their glory, just look at some of his expressions, fantasic!

So now I have the basis for an idea so as with any project I begin, I start by looking for existing reference, looking at films, books, the web, whatever I can lay my hands on. I quite often find myself collecting cuttings or pictures that have references to things I might need in the future.

 

I wanted to keep the character quite simple for the purposes of animation, the more detail I ploughed into the design could hinder the process of the movement. So when referencing bards/minstrels I wanted to look for a simple style costume that could be easy to model and rig.

As the little note says above initially I’d intended to have three characters within this little sketch, but with time constraints and requiring other people to animate and rig, model etc I felt I’d be biting off more than I could chew. I had written an in-depth back story for the ‘Whistler’ and how he came to be on the run and meeting his two colleges, even to the point I created a number of calling cards he would leave as he escaped his pursuers. The Bigger of the two characters would carry his little companion, and would be the general muscle of the group.

Thinking about the ‘Whistlers’ look, I had in mind him being quite an old character at first, with experience and wisdom driving his character, but then I began to think of characters I could relate to his actions on screen. Errol Flynn was someone who I had in mind, often appearing in swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films.

Storyboards & LAV’s

Here is the first stage of the opening sequence some fast thumbs giving me the breakdown and description of the various frames, nothing to complicated at this stage as the chances are things might change as the storyline develops.

Here was the second stage of storyboards before I went on to shooting the LAV’s (Live action videos) Above is the first 10-15 seconds of the opening sequence as we are first introduced to the ‘Whistler’.

The next stage and probably my favourite when thinking about creating an animation, and that’s the LAV reference prior to animation. In the above footage I thank my brother for being a huge sport and representing ‘The Whistler’ as reference. Ipad at the ready we filmed what seemed hundreds of these in order to get different approaches. This is only a clip from the final video but it gives you an indication of how it progressed from the storyboards.