I
have mentioned before that I try to recycle items that I used in
previous projects. This is difficult mainly because many of the
earlier items in my collection were not created with skill.
However,
two items that I am proud of reappeared in Zann's room. These are the
grandfather clock, and the piano. Both items were initially created
for my second animated short, "Painting with my Sister." (I
also reused them in the postponed video game "Homeless Guy;"
the clock makes an important appearance in our successful video game
"The Elf Who Killed Christmas.") I suppose that there are
details from both items that I would change if I were to recreate
them, but for now, they suited their purpose as background set
dressing.
One
thing that I added to the piano was sheet music that sat on upon the
piano, thus giving a bit more detail. Also, imagining the cluttered
nature of Zann's room (and psyche), I tried to put more and more
items of clutter upon the piano, as though it was also a piece of
furniture.
Given
the role that music would play in this piece, there were times when I
considered using the piano as the instrument that Zann would perform
on. There were a couple of reasons for this. First is that I already
had the piano, and thus wouldn't need to create an additional
instrument. Second, I knew that performing on a piano would be much
easier to animate than performing on a guitar (which I ultimately
chose), or a viol (which is the instrument in the story). The third
reason for considering the piano as Erich Zann's musical instrument
is that I knew it would be easier to create or record piano music
than guitar music (which is a pain to record), or a viol (which I
don't have access too); even using midi generated music, there are
much better sounding solutions for piano synthesis than for guitar or
viol (or violin) synthesis. (I will discuss these last two issues in
more detail later.)
Despite
these three good reasons for choosing Zann to play the piano, I
decided against this. Ultimately, it was an aesthetic decision that
the final scene could not be realized with him playing a piano.
However, there was still room for a piano to sit in the corner of his
room. (The alarm clock is hardly seen, but since I talk about clocks here, this seemed like a nice place to show it.)
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