= Loons =

Synopsis
A stylistically animated visual poem featuring a day in the life of a family of two loons and their three fluffy babies set to beautiful piano music.


Style
My unique design would appear like coloured pencil drawings on black paper featuring realistic movements to the beautifully bittersweet score. Using a flowing cinematic visual language this short would be dimensionally computer animated and digitally rendered. The image would be stylistically post-processed and manipulated to have the organic appearance of an animated coloured pencil illustration. I intend to present this animated short on majestic high-resolution theatrical film or HDTV.


Target Audiences
• All ages
• families
• environmentalists
• nature enthusiasts
• music enthusiasts
• Canadians (and Americans living near loon habitat regions)
• national and international tourists


Inspiration & Funding
I have started to compile many lists of links to related sites for funding, support, assistance, or inspiration and there are doubtless ample others.
• Resources


Potential Audio Tracks
• My late grandmother, Gladys Carswell, wrote a beautiful bittersweet piece specifically for me to use for an animated short.
• Dave Grusin's opening track from the feature film "On Golden Pond" score (requires licencing rights) includes loon calls. May be too dated.
• Hagood Hardy "The Homecoming" (requires licencing rights). Also dated, the nice familiarity may also seem cheezy.


Initial Budget
With an approximate length of 3-4 minutes (depending on the length of the audio track) I estimate the production could take 10-12 months for 2 good computer artists, myself being one, to create (model, rig, animate, render, and composite) a majestic piece of story telling art. To keep it simpler the animators would provide their own gear and work from my home at cut a rate of $6,000 per month each for a total of $120,000-144,000 over that 10-12 months.

The loon above (from a painting on a paddle)
and the scene below are by Jason Carswell
painted during the late 80s or early 90s.