On this elective (loops), the goal is to create an interesting 40-60 second loop animation, including sound. To get to what will eventually be the final concept of the loop, we must first go through a process of research, exploring ideas and coming up with a body of visual references that we can take inspiration from, and learning to connect quick ideas and develop them.

I said in my appraisal for the last project that i want to try going through the process properly before coming up with a final idea right off the bat, which is something I usually do. I’m going into this project with no idea what I want the end result to be; I’ll come to that conclusion through research and progression on the project.

To begin this project, we had to come up with what is described as a 3D mind map; a detailed mind map with many branches, where we could get potential ideas down and eventually choose some concepts we’re interested in and think of ways to connect them.

This was my initial mind map. To begin with, I just spit balled some quick ideas in relation to loops; things that happen/occur infinitely, with the end connecting to the beginning. I put the definitions for what loops are in the middle, so that I didn’t go too far off the rails with my research. I looked into some things I’m interested in, such as existing stories containing loops and mythology.

Some concepts i especially liked from this mind map were the idea that day and night are an existing loop that we all experience, as they’re destined to repeat, and the idea of fate or destiny, as anything existing on a loop would inevitably reach the beginning again, fated to keep on repeating it’s life story. I like things that tell a story, or at least hint towards the existence of a story leaving it’s plot to the viewer’s interpretation, so right off the bat these things appealed to me. They also allowed me to think of some quick imagery; the sun and moon, light and darkness and another branch I found interest in; shadows. I felt that I wanted to build more branches off of what I had, so I extended the mind map;

In this mind map, I tried building off of the concepts of day & night and destiny. I asked myself; what happens during the day and during the night? what separates them? how do they relate to each other? i drew more branches and explored these things in a little more research.

One thing i found particularly interesting, as mentioned before, was shadows; they’re fated to change in position, shape and size throughout the day, somewhat existing on a loop. They have also been very important in the past, being used to tell what time of day it is before we had a better way of figuring it out.

From this mind map I found 3 themes I want to work with; shadows, light and day and destiny. I have a few cool ideas that could stem from this; someone changing identities between the day and the night, shadows coming to life or travelling in interesting ways, gods of the sun and moon, etc, but these are just initial ideas and I’m not committing to them much because something more interesting can and probably will come up in my mind when I research further than just a mind map.