Group Work initial ideas

GROUP WORK: INITIAL IDEAS.

1st Idea: Stone soup.

When given the topic over the summer I decided to do a folk tale that didn't come from one specific culture. Instead I thought that a story from the broader "European" culture which multiple countries shared. This was when I remembered being told the story of Stone soup during primary school. After research I discovered that most European nations have their own version of the tale, one that interested me was the French version, where a soldier from the napoleonic wars uses the stone soup trick to feed himself.

I then took upon the task of researching all about the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars. From this I got the general timeline of events alongside what the common man went through during the 3 decades of turbulent French history.



For the overview I had our Protagonist play the part of a French light infantry soldier who spent his youth amist the Vendee counter uprising, where in order to survive he had to become resourceful and quick witted. After joining the Grande Armee and taking part in the great retreat from Moscow he got lost along the way. He goes through Europe on his way home to France.

The story would start as The Soldier makes his way through what is today Germany. He finds an old garrison town among either the Elbe or the Rhine (he doesn't really know anymore) that's entirely empy. After the first plea for kindness he uses his scally French ways of getting the town to cough up their food and makes a big pot of stone soup where everyone find out the power of co-operation.

 As it centres along the continent with French and German protagonists I wanted to follow the style of Albert Uderzo and his work on the Asterix Comics. I thought this would help further illustrate the "europeanness" of the idea.


Of course I came to realise that this story would go on longer than a minute. So at about 2 weeks till the presentation I quickly decided to do another idea I had, based on Norse mythology (specifically Odin and the wild hunt). From the research I gathered from the library I discovered that Odin would go on a wild hunt across the world, and if you left his 8 legged horse sleipnir some food and drink he would return in kindness sweets for your children (the Anglo Saxon equivalent would become the forefathers to father Christmas).

I did some oil paints to see what colours I thought would be essential. I went with the second one as it helped reflect the coldness of Scandinavia during yuletide.

The video: this was before I knew much about photoshop so please forgive the shoddy quality