Night Life Blog

Acquiring nightlifeproject.ie has taken a lot longer than expected. I am using letshost.ie as they are the cheapest available. They then act as a go-between with the IEDR who handle the domain registration, requiring the following:

Thank you for your application. As you are applying under the Natural Person category,we will require the applicant to submit a copy of one of the following documents:-
- Irish passport
- Irish driver’s licence
- Irish revenue document, Social welfare document/card showing PPS no.
- Irish birth certificate
- Irish marriage certificate
- Irish utility bill (e.g.: UPC, SKY / ESB, Airtricity / Bord Gais / Eircom / Vodafone, O2, Meteor, Three - bill pay phones only).
- A copy of a bank statement for a personal account, with the financial details blanked out.

We also require information outlining the applicant’s claim on the proposed domain name. This must show their claim, intent and connection and be a clear reason as to why the applicant wants the particular domain. It must be complete relevant and legal. Please submit a letter from the applicant on official letterhead (if applicable) outlining their claim on the proposed domain name. The claim must relate to the domain holder and not a 3rd party.

So I submitted a scan of my passport along with the following letter:

To the IEDR,

I recently bought the domain nightlifeproject.ie and wish to register it.

I am a final year multimedia student in Cork Institute of Technology. “Night Life” is the name of my bachelor project. It is an interactive animation project, the story being about 2 stars, hence the name night life.The website will be used for collecting publicly submitted assets for the animation production, as well as promoting and showcasing the final work.

As proof of time and effort invested in the domain, the site (in progress) is currently available at http://nightlife.aldercass.com

See also the attached scan of my passport as proof of citizenship.

Yours Sincerely,

Alder Cass
alder.cass@gmail.com
086 128 1153

I am now awaiting their response. I expect we’ll have the domain by Monday.

Since the backgrounds rely on the participation and contribution of the public, we decided that as soon as the website is up and running we will approach local primary school teachers, asking them to spread the word among their students and get them to contribute artwork. This could take the form of a contest, a winner being given a copy of the animation on DVD once it is completed. We may even convince teachers to make an in-class activity out of it. This would be a great way of collecting a lot of backgrounds to use and to generate public interest in the project.

This task will need to be approached with the utmost professionalism. We will need to create posters to distribute to the teachers, as well as contacting them beforehand to organise meeting.

Interfacing with teachers will mean being able to get participation from children without having to deal with all of the red tape and difficulty with interacting with them directly.

Since the backgrounds will be publically submitted, resulting in a mis-matched and diverse range of imagery almost reminiscent of a scrap book, we have decided to make the other visual assets (characters, props, etc.) follow suit by utilising a paper cut-out style similar to the following:

Although that artwork is created traditionally, the same effect can be achieved digitally quite easily through the use of texture overlays and drop shadows. We will be collecting our own textures; card, paper, wrapping, any materials one might find in a scrap book. These will then be scanned for digital use.

This also adds an interesting constraint to the design of the project: if we can’t make it out of paper cut-outs, we can’t use it in the animation. The scrap-book theme is not an explicit aspect of the project but more a style guide for us.

The crude nature of the design will also allow us to focus more on the animation itself rather than taking too long working on very complex characters and objects.

Today, Robert and Alder attended the script writing workshop with Darren Bolger. He covered a lot of valuable ground with us, from writing a treatment to script writing software to the appropriate language to use.

We started by writing a treatment. This gives an outline of the story to potential funders and acts as a foundation for the script. He told us it should be written in the present tense and be about 10 lines. This is the new treatment we came up with during the exercise:

The two human characters, male and female are lying on the bonnet of the car, star gazing. The female asks the male if he thinks there’s any life “up there”.

In space, the two main star characters, Altair and Vega, are sneaking away from school.

They cause mischief, harass constellations, and fly down to earth. Altair interacts with children who react with wonder and terror.  Vega in competition with Altair’s antics imitates cows in a nearby field.

They fly back out into space and unwittingly awaken the antagonist monster character who begins pursuing them.

Their parents are informed of their absence and go looking for them.

The monster wreaks havoc in pursuit of Altair and Vega and corners the two but Their parents arrive just in time.

The monster comes close to destroying Altair but Vega tricks it into consuming itself. There is a flash of light and for a moment it is unclear whether Vega survived.

The protagonists are revealed to be safe and well, and are happily reunited, but with a lesson learned.

Returning to the star-gazers, the male human answers the opening question by simply responding  “nah.”

Darren’s only criticism of the treatment was that we should use more descriptive language and action verbs.

We then went on to using script writing software Celtx which is free and offers a lot of automation for the process and was extremely easy to use. We wrote the beginning of the story with Darren’s feedback and advice. He also gave us printouts about how to write realistic dialogue as well as a glossary of scripting terms.

Overall the workshop was very much worthwhile and informative. Ken and Robert will be completing the script next week.

We have decided the project is titled “Night Life”. This means straight away we need to register a domain for the website as the website will be in use very soon. We chose to pursue a .ie domain which isn’t as easy to acquire as a .com domain as we need to provide proof of connection to Ireland and a letter of intent.

nightlife.ie is already taken so we will be acquiring nightlifeproject.ie which is available.