brainstorm

I have been brainstorming each brief and giving myself pros and cons of each, then narrowing the ideas down to those that are both interesting for learning purposes, decent enough for portfolio pieces and long enough to plan properly.

On Your Own seems to be the brief i've setteled on so far but not specifically an idea.

The Mini Greats: the mini greats is what ive named an idea i have as a lead off from one of my Greenscreen weekly projects from brief one, I recorded a baby as chewbacca an edited him into a scene from Starwars, this went down a hit when showing my brief one submissions to peers, The overall basic idea is to edit the baby into other great/classic movie scenes, similar to the  'when dads are left alone with the kids' type of videos, classics so far include godzilla, scarface, mission impossible, ace ventura and more, It would be interesting and involve a good number of the techniques from brief one, mainly green screen, matte painting, 2d tracking, perhaps some camera mapping, each mini great would have its own potential for each technique.
Although matte painting and green screen where my favourite techniques learned in brief one, i need to really improve on them to succeed in this brief, lighting would need to be better, cooperation from the baby slightly more, costumes and backgrounds will be correct but kept simple as i want to keep as much original classic footage as possible, so i am actually compositing the child into the film rather than just a reenactment.

Bobble Love: a silent 3d movie, green screening possibly, 2d tracking definitely, but mostly the techniques learned in hdri imaging and 3d tracking would be used in this project.
the basic idea is a blue slightly dented bobble head has a curious infatuation with the new pink and shiny bobble head, the characters and rigs should be easy, the uv wrapping and texturing would be very interesting, the scene however i would probably want to keep as clear and well lit as possible, especially as its primarily a romcom with shiny desk ornaments. i have the idea it should be a short with upbeat tempo, possibly original depending on how much time i have in the end, the story follows from a sad lonely blue bobble head on the desk, he sneaks about the desk and computer to meet the shiny new pink bobble head, after a series of mishaps and failures he resigns himself and tries looking for love on the imac on dating websites for bobble heads, thats where 2d tracking and photoshop will come in, theres several storyboards so far but they all end up with the blue bobble realising the girl bobble head is just as weird or likes his clumsy weirdness and getting together in the end. Although it is the cleanest idea and most of the techniques would be used, it is also the longest and im worried about rendering times and tries. I believe Maya might be best to model and rig the bobble heads as its better for that kind of simple but fluid animation, it would be quicker to animate but i would have to relearn how to use it with the brief one techniques.

Halo: although not reenacting halo, it is what ive called my second favourite idea, ive called it this because it was what i was playing while i came up with it, the basic idea is i have first person shooter type footage walking around the city/town i will have it storyboarded to know when to stop and shake, or possibly just stop and shake the camera later in after effects. I will have both 2d and 3d in this, possibly matte paint the background but that would require rotoscoping out the sky, i will have a 3d gun and shot effects, 3d and or 2d characters getting killed, at this point im thinking aliens, but that will come later in character development, 2d assets made in photoshop as the closest layer to look like the first person shooter has a digital helmet on, similar to the majority or war and futuristic games. the pros are alot of the elements could be easily made to professional standard, ie the digital camera and the 3d gun, however i am weary of how i would achieve 3d elements tracked in footage, although i know the theory i only 3d tracked a still model indoors and even that took me three different types of footage to get the one that would track correctly, not only am i hesitant on my abilities to really achieve the style im looking for, i also think this particular project would need to start filming very soon otherwise id run the risk of running out of time to reshoot the footage if and when needs be.
This feels too be the most time consuming because it will involve the most techniques, which i hope would be worth it but im undecided as i cant run the risk of not perfecting each of those techniques to succeed with this particular idea.

Fight: On the subject of games my current favourite idea is fight, a mortal combat, street fighter sort of game, two opponents, on either side of the screen, the idea is based more on the original games rather than newer remakes and similar recent fighting games.
there would be a matte painting in the background and the characters will either be green screened actors or 3d characters, there would be explosions etc going off in the background and particle simulations to give it a more realistic setting, there would be intro 2d titles and assets around the screen, such as the health bar and possibly the hit/collision noises (very 60s Batman) the background and title sequences will all be just as important as the actual fight scenes, however im undecided how i should go about the ending, most of the original 80s and 90s fighting games are extremely gory and im not sure how well that would be looked upon for a serious university project.
Although i want to have fun with this project and learn new things that i could possibly use in future, i also want to be cautious, as im not sure if first and second year humour within the work is appreciated as much in final year.
The reason this is my favourite is it feels like it would be the right length, give me the right timeframe, include plenty but not all techniques, however because im so interested in the other ideas, this one is harder to storyboard and finalise.