This post was meant to be one post, and I know I have said that I wouldn’t divide my posts up into smaller parts. But I am going to do that now. Not because I am doing it to make sure I get my 17 posts, but because it will get much more clear and tidy for the reader out there and the post had been extreme long if I did not divide it up. And every part of this post fills my own standards of a good post so I do not feel that this will be a problem.

I have divided it up into 3 parts and each part has a ending where I try to explain and reflect on what I have learned from those things that have been written about. Part 1 is about why we brought this teddy into the story, and about collecting the references. Modeling and Texturing will be in Part 2, while rigging will be in Part 3.
PART 1.

Why a companion?

We haven’t really discussed this very clearly in our group, just some lose thoughts around it, but I want to share what I was focusing on when we chose to bring in another character into the story. Because it is loads of benefits when we bring in another character into the stage. You get a whole new element that can change the story, and give the story better turning points.

First, why a teddy bear? This is maybe the easiest question. By making the companion a teddy bear, we make the girl much cuter. She gets much more character of having a little teddy bear at her arm. And it does make the story a bit more believable. Every kid at some stage in their life is very addicted of having a toy or a teddy bear with them all the time.

She can hold her teddy tight when she is scared. We can have her show more emotion with the teddy, than we could without. And when she runs with the teddy bear, it will swing back and forth so we get a dramatic feel.

The biggest reason of let the girl have a companion in the story was that we felt that the story was not strong enough. It needed a dramatic situation. We needed a reason for her to stop up and confront the smoke monster that is following her. When she loses the teddy, she needs to go back and pick it up. We get a whole new element of excitement in the movie.
Many movies lets the main person get a companion that are being used throughout the movie to tell the story better, and bring in scenes that you couldn’t have without them. If you take Lord of the rings for example, you can see how they used Sam. Frodo get a traveler companion that make’s Frodo have to go back and help Sam out and opposite. The friendship between Frodo and Sam grows throughout the story, but later on they are being split up by Golum, but Sam still go back to help Frodo when he is taken by the orcs. It’s nice to see how different movies use persons to tell the story better, and think I can learn a lot from that when I am going to make a new movie sometime in the future.

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References.

We started with searching after references all over the internet. It was loads of pictures there, so it got our brains working. Who knew it were so many different types of teddy’s out there? These are some of the pictures we found in the start:

These didn’t quite strike our hearts to say it like that. Too find out what type of teddy we wanted, we needed to know how the teddy was supposed to be treated, and what it should be doing in our movie. His owner runs a lot, so we wanted him to have a slim body, with thin arms and legs. So his limbs could be thrown around a bit to get that dramatic effect.
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As you can see from some of the first concept for the movie, Knut had already thought in that direction. To get some measurements, I took a look at some of the teddy bears that my mum has bought throughout many years. We found out that about 40 centimeters would be a nice length for the teddy.

We didn’t really need a name for this character, but we kind of started talking a bit about it, and Fredrik come up with Herman. From there it weren’t a long way to “Herman the Teddy Bear”. So now it had a name too.
Experience:

I didn’t feel that I really learned a lot from the collecting references part. It’s basically the same as I have done loads of times before. The one thing I learn, was that I should look around in the house for real references before I go onto the internet. Better to have them in my hand than on the computer.

The most interesting thing about this part is that I look at characters in movies in a bit different way. I try to see how they are being affected by the others around them, and try to think how it would have been without them.




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