Working from the idea of using the construction signs as my starting point for the animations, I began to reread the passage in order to capture elements of the story. From doing this I created the first of my still signs;
The potential animation that can follow this, I imagine, will be along the lines of the bricks moving up and down or falling as the character walks. Something simple to match the style and my own capabilities but also still enforce the idea of them being a struggling worker.
Hoping to not have all the works looking too similar, I remained with the same strong orange but made a cation sign. The idea seemed from the part of the passage that focuses on the Workie watching the businessmen and women as they work. I imagined this scene as him lying down in a construction building and watching them through binoculars with a sandwich in hand. I’ve created the sign from the point of view through the binoculars as it keeps the image simple and frames the working character well.
For the third image, I deviated from the orange theme to create more of a warning sign. One aspect that I couldn’t get out of my head when thinking about a building site is the noise so I thought the best way to represent this would be to have a builder jackhammering someone’s head as the jackhammer is the cause of a headache. For this, I designed this sign with the intention of the sign zooming out to see the man’s head beneath the jackhammer.
I then decided to create my final sign, again changing the colour to a yellow colour. The intention behind the animation that is triggered by this sign will be one that shows the relationship between the fat workie and the people who work in the offices, of whom he is jealous. So for this image I have included both a male and female character in order to show this dynamic.
Some of the concepts for how the character will look and what the scene will be in the last animation are below:
For the male character I want to make him blocky and quite short to emphasize that he is a “Fat Workie”, the female character will be slender and I suppose there will be so expectation for their interaction to be somewhat misogynistic however seeing as the focus is on the builder’s insecurities I will try to show him making the effort to be seen by her rather than her avoiding his attention.
For the scene I thought it would make sense to place them in a city, somewhere you would find builders and business people interacting regularly and naturally, I chose to use a crossroads as it is an organic place for people to meet and be forced to stand with each other and when you’re not wanting to interact with whoever is next to you, you are quick off of the mark to cross the road.