Life A Journey On Train

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Life A Journey On Train

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I googled 'life is like a train journey'. I found lots of poems and this slide show. I'm going to read the pages and see if any ideas crop up.

One idea to to show the old man at the station at the beginning in darkness/evening time. Signifying coming to the end of his 'life' in this place. I'd love to show old versions of the stations.
An idea is to have a flickering light in the station at the beginning ( or when the transformations occur at the end of the short) as a device to show the old station.
Maybe i could use the light going form dark to bright streaks (streaks through trees image i have in my head from a few posts earlier!) , transformation occurs , and then fade back down to night time.

I like the idea of steam showing time passing but unsure how i want it to work. Show calender pages blowing away in the steam? just thinking aloud....

Story Development feedback from Ed Hooks

Recently I attended Animex 09 and took the 'Acting for animators' workshop with Ed Hooks.
It was a briliant day and Ed is very cool and intelligent guy.
I left the workshop with loads of new ideas about how story in film and animation really works. I love the idea of Shamans and 'what does the tribe need to know'. The day was filled with an amazing amount of stuff to take in. Ive since read one of his books and the stuff in it is genius. I would recommend his work to anyone in film/animation.
Hopefully i can use some of this in my work going forward.
For further information see here:
http://www.actingforanimators.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Acting-Animators-Ed-Hooks/dp/0325002290

Ed was also gracious enough to look over my story and provided alot of feedback regarding further development.(he replied to my email pretty much immediately).
One of his suggestions was to look into the subjects of transluscence and how Miyazaki plays around with being able to see through spirits. An excellent excuse to watch 'spirited away' again but this time pay particular attention to the spirits/train journey. (I've also come accross a film called ' The ghost and mrs muir'. I'm not sure how relevant that will be.)
Ed also suggested using the steam from the locomotive (showing passage of time) vs modern day trains.
I'm really grateful for the excellent insights.
(sorry if this post is a bit gushy but thats how i feel!)

Update (finally!)

Its been a while!

I had to put short on hold due to external circumstances but hopefully i can begin to make progress again.

The concept art stage was surprisingly difficult for me and made me re-evaluate my skills.
Not just in concept art but all aspects of an animated short.

I will probably have another blog to document my studies rather so as to keep this one exclusively for my short.

Random idea.
I was walking to work this morning , the sun was still rising so low in the sky. The light was streaking through the trees towards me and so it made everything that wasn't immediately if front of me very hard to see. I wondered if that was something i could use.
I was also looking at some photographs of animals at an exhibition in leeds. The animals were in focus but the backgrounds were not. The animals jumped out from the photo (as intended).
Both these things would put focus on a character/item within a scene.

I'm going to do some rough sketches of a few picture i have.
I view the short in my head as a live action movie (i have still images in mind) , i think mainly because i'm not sure of the style i would like to use.
My recent studies/podcast lectures have plant the idea of experimental animation rather than 'straight forward' cartoon style.
At the moment i'm not sure what that means exactly or even if i want to do it in 3D at all.
I wonder what it would take to do a short in true 3D?