show reel

Show reel from NANA GUO on Vimeo.
This is a show reel to show my works when i was study in Renmin University of China and some animation works in Teesside University Second year in UK.

AVE research

FYP research

CAN research

CAN lobster design (basic idea)

CAN chef design(basic idea)

CAN trearment

The Treatment

Production Title: ‘The Lobster Pot’

This story is all about a world famous 3 star Michelin Chef ‘Gerard’ known for his amazing ‘Homard Cuit à l'eau’ (or to us more common folk ‘pan boiled lobster’).  As Chef Gerard, who is known for normally being very cool calm collected, sets about his nights work will his reputation of serving the best lobster in all of France survive the night, or will the crafty antics of a freedom hungry lobster ruin everything??

In the being of the animation we see the outside of the restraint where all the action takes place.  From here we fade into the kitchen where our main character Chef Gerard who gets an order for one of his famous dishes ‘Homard Cuit à l'eau’.  Chef Gerard starts to prepare his dish; he collects his lobster and starts chopping the other ingredients which will accompany this critter in the big boiling pot.  As he is chopping away the lobster slowly starts to creep away but without taking his eyes off the fast moving blade Chef Gerard drags the lobster back. Quickly Chef Gerard gets into the swing of cooking and food starts to get launched left, right and centre all landing into the pot, including the lobster, however when Chef Gerard goes over to inspect how everything is cooking he finds the lobster is gone!  He scans the room and finds the lobster on the other side of the kitchen so grabs it and throws it back into pot.  Next its over to the fridge for the next lot of stuff but as the door closes Chef Gerard thinks he catches sight of the lobster so quickly re opens the fridge only to find nothing there, however as he goes to close the door again he has the feeling something is on his shoulder.  As Chef Gerard slowly turns his head to see what it is, he finds it’s the lobster who has again escaped from the boiling pot and with lightning fast reactions Chef Gerard once again grabs the lobster! Holding the lobster in front of his face Chef Gerard gives it an angry shake, as he does this however the lobster sticks out its claw and snips off half Chef Gerard moustache!  This does not please Chef Gerard in the slightest and from a cool calm and collected chef his fuse quickly burns out and now seems set on destroying the lobster and using anything he can grab to do.  Eventually he grabs the lobster and with a somewhat evil and demented look on his face he heads back to the pot, throws the lobster in and sits on the lid laughing to himself.  Before too long though his face starts to turn red and smoke starts appearing from his ‘le derier‘ and with a large yelp he leaps off the pan, smashes his head amongst the hanging pans above before landing back down on the ground, amongst the chaos and mess of fruit and veg he threw around earlier, slipping over and falls flat on his face. Chef Gerard eventually roles over and, lying flat on his back still panting, stares at the ceiling .  All of a sudden two eyes and claws creep over the edge of the counter and Chef Gerard sees the lobster peering down at him lying there.  The anger now creeps back across Chef Gerard’s face along with a nervous twitch and his demented laughter, he leaps up off the group, grabs the lobster pins it down. He then scans along his collection of cooking knives before settling on the largest machete he owns.  As he raises the machete up to the sky Chef Gerard looks into the now puppy dog eyes of the lobster.  After a brief few seconds the machete starts to slowly lower back down to his side.  Chef Gerard puts the machete down, smiles nicely to the lobster before reaching off screen, grabbing his meat tenderiser and finally smashes the lobster to pieces!  The final shot we see is of Chef Gerard walking out the kitchen still twitching and laughing to himself as he wipes ‘Homard Cuit à l'eau’ off the specials board.

In terms of the style of the animation, we have decided to go for a Disney and Pixar type animation where by everything is smooth and seems innocent and sweet until Chef Gerard’s mood changes and everything turns slightly demented and evil.  When it comes to the characters in our animation, for Chef Gerard we have looked and will be referencing such characters a Basil Faulty and the Chef from ‘The Little Mermaid’ and for the lobster we have again looked at Sebastian from ‘The little mermaid’ but we will also be referencing Bugs Bunny and the rabbit from the Pixar short ‘Presto’.  In terms of sound and audio for the animation we don’t want there to be any dialog spoken so instead we are having nice calm jazz style music playing threw out but again as Chef Gerard mood changes so does the music and we plan on ending it with loud classical music where the drums are heavily banging and there is lots of symbols smashing, to really match Chef Gerard’s actions.

In order for us to work most effectively as a group we will be splitting up our project into 3 main parts, the first part being ‘Pre-Production’ followed by the ‘Animation’ and finally finish everything with the Post-Production’.  Threw out this project, we will be using a number of different types of software threw out this project too including Photoshop, 3D Max and Softimage.

All in all although our idea may be large, we have the skills amongst us as a group and the organisational power to complete everything we set out to do to a high standard.  We plan on distributing all the jobs through each section of the project evenly so that we are effective in completing very good work and by the end of it all we plan on producing a well polished and enjoyable final animation.




Write By Chris Lingard