Tuesday 15 December 2009

Visual Influences?

I’m almost ready to start concept art for my animation and I’ve found  a few artists and works that I feel connect well with my story.

I began with a distinct interest in the work of Chris Sanders, I love the way he enlarges different parts of the body to emphasise the child like qualities of younger characters and the rounded style that he uses which adds to this effect.  Here’s a link to his web comic Kiskaloo which contains good examples of where he exaggerates the parts of the physique that we associate with toddlers/babies in order to provoke an adoring reaction to his work.

http://kiskaloo.com/2008/07/april-7-2008/ 

Here’s another link to a sketch of his I found on Deviantart where the same style is used to a greater effect.

http://alohalilo.deviantart.com/art/Sketch-of-a-friend-107877826

I intend to draw attention to the innocence of the children and appearance of the doll in my film in contrast to the gruesome occurrences and lurking evil that resides with in the doll.   As such I want to develop a style which emphasises both aspects. I consider the work of Chris Sanders to be a good starting point in achieving the cute side of my aesthetic.

I’ve also been looking at the work of Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini, an illustrator who uses mixed media, collage, computer software and a mostly sombre palette with strong accent colours to achieve eerie but enchanting images. Here are some examples of her work that I particularly like and a link to her webpage.

djt16 met djt08 djt09

http://www.theartworksinc.com/folio/terrazzini/terrazzini.htm

These pieces have a strong sense of innocence and nature in contrast with darkness and corruption which I think ties in well with my story. I’m interested in the way she uses only one or two vibrant colours in a piece to draw the eye as I think this technique would work well in highlighting important aspects of my film such as the lipstick marks.

Additionally I’ve looked at Coraline, another film which uses a doll in a dark way, however in this film the doll never seems innocent. Here are some screen shots from the trailer.othermother   Coralineghosts

 

 

 

 

I like the way dark colours are used to set the scene and the use of litter and the single metal frame bed in the second image which connote isolation and neglect.

I have also been looking at the work of Jeffrey Thomas http://jeftoonportfolio.blogspot.com/ and I’m drawn to his “Twisted Princess” images. Here are a couple of examples.

twistedprincess_jane twistedprincess_beautyandthebeast

The way he has used darker colours, filters and generally “twisted” Disney’s perfectly pure Princesses relates to the way I want to transform the orphans and doll in my film.

I also like the style he uses for “Red” (can be found on the website I’ve linked"), especially the way the the main character and blood stand out due to them being the only things with vibrant colours. Additionally I like the idea of using writing in the blood, it could be a good way to add to the communication of my story to the audience, although the message would have to be kept short and simple in order for the viewer to catch it.

Monday 14 December 2009

2nd Animatic and some new ideas

I’ve been having trouble uploading my 2nd animatic so until I manage to make it work or update it and re-render, here’s what the boards looked like before I took them  in to Photoshop; resized (drawn wrong aspect ratio), coloured and separated  parts of them on different layers for after effects.

I was still unhappy with a few of the shots because they didn’t read to well or didn’t look right so I drew out some more and have started re-jiggling things in after effects. Here are the updated shots.

The updates are of when Shelley enters her mother’s room to find the doll and a pool of blood, when the orphan girls go to look for the doll and look under the bed (which in my opinion now reads a whole lot better) and finally when Shelley kisses the doll at the end. The last one I still may change slightly as I think it may look better if Shelley’s eyes go a little crossed.

I’m also going to take the sequences of the orphan girls turning in to dolls and make them happen at the same time. As long as it works fine it will save me some time to do more with the ending. I’d like to experiment with the doll’s transformation in to Shelley’s mother, using the same sort of effect that’s used in “13 Ghosts”, “Grudge” and “The Ring” where the footage speeds up,slows down, rewinds, fast-forwards, cuts to the character in different positions and overlaps several images at one time, often with a filter effect over the top to further confuse the the audience and draw them in.. This gives an eerie, haunting effect which could give my film a new edge and will also give me a chance to experiment with different media; possibly using photographs of my own china doll mixed in with the drawn version. So many possibilities, so little time. That said here are a few examples I found on youtube of the sort of effect I’m talking about. I’m off to do more work.

Sunday 22 November 2009

1st Animatic

Unfortunately due to laptop failure and my own carelessness I no longer have my first animatic to post here. The feed back from the rushes session was to “cut the fluff”, the shots that are unimportant to the development of the story which add nothing to the film. I decided to cut the entire part between Shelley finding the mark on Orphan doll 1 and Orphan 2’s transformation.

Cutboards

I feel that these take away from the drama of the situation and it is more effective to have the action run together.

I was also encouraged to take another look at my shots,  look more closely at the camera angles used in  horror films and use that knowledge to change them so they fit better with the genre. It was also suggested that I add colour for my next animatic and put shots through after effects. I’m in the process of creating my next animatic. I’ll post it when finished.

Storyboard ready for 1st animatic

Having decided to start the film at the orphanage I have begun with a close up of a Nun with Shelley at the entrance to the room at the orphanage. I didn’t want to start with an establishing shot of the building as I feel it is more important to get straight in to the action. I also wanted to encapsulate Shelley and the other orphans in their own space with no outside interference so it feels more like there is no one in the world to help them when strange things start happening. I feel having them isolated makes it more dramatic.

Scene1

In this scene Shelley enters the room and opens the box containing the doll resulting in a flash back. It shows all the important parts that I mentioned from the first boards. It will be noticeable as a flash back because I will use fades and cross dissolves through out. The scene also introduces the two orphan girls. It ends with Shelley pushing the doll back in the box, chucking it under the bed and curling up to sleep. The box falls open underneath the bed.

borads1scene1boards2Scene1

Scene 2

In this scene the two orphan girls wake up to sneak a peek at the doll having caught glimpses of it earlier. They open the box to find nothing inside and the doll missing. They go back to bed unsuccessful and find kiss marks on their pillows. Slightly confused, but too tired to care, they turn the pillows over and go back to sleep.

boards1scene2

Scene3

Orphan 2 is abruptly awoken by Orphan 1 who is bleeding quite badly. The first few shots are from Orphan 2’s POV. Orphan 1 transforms in to a doll and lies limp on the floor where Shelley picks her up. Shelley notices a kiss mark on the orphan doll’s cheek.

boards1scene3

Shelley takes the doll over to Orphan 2 who at first reclines in fear  but catches a glimpse of the mark and points Shelley towards the same mark that was left on the girls’ pillows. Shelley goes over to the former Orphan’s pillow and turns it over. When she sees the mark she hugs the pillow. She is startled by a blood stifled scream and looks over to her left where Orphan 2 is bleeding and transforming in the same way that Orphan 1 did. the doll from the box is visible on her bed. Orphan 2 turns in to a doll and smashes her head open on the floor revealing steaming brains. Shelley looks closely at the doll from the box and  recognises the colour of it’s lips. The same colour as her mother’s lipstick, the same as all the lipstick marks.

boards2scene3

Shelley sees her mother in the doll and kisses it. The doll shakes violently and Shelley drops it on the floor where it begins to absorb the pool of blood left by the Orphans. She grows and transforms in to Shelley’s Mother. Shelley hugs her and the end shot shows her Mother’s eyes glazed over like a dolls.

boards3scene3

Friday 20 November 2009

Initial Idea & Storyboard

My film is about a girl (Shelley) that finds a cursed doll hidden in the loft of her home which unbeknownst to her traps her mother (her mother is presumed dead).  Leading her to be put into an orphanage where she is put in a room with two other girls.  They are horrifically transformed by the dolls curse leaving Shelley to find the truth and perhaps save her Mother, I want the ending to be ambiguous.

I started my storyboards from the doll’s POV.

Layer 0

I began the shot looking from inside the box through the keyhole with little light, it then moves up to a mouth, an eye and finally zooms out to a young girls face.  Although I liked this sequence it set the pace to slow for the beginning of my film which being a horror needs to be quite fast, leading quickly to a dramatic event.

After this, it cuts to a long shot of the girl exploring the box and finding a key at it’s base which she uses to open it. I drew her flinching away from her first glimpse inside the box, afraid at what was inside and then timidly look again and discover the doll. She sits in awe of the doll until the last shot, where her mother calls for her.

Untitled-1

As this whole sequence of looking in the box, finding the key, opening the box and finding the doll would take a long time I decided to take out the key altogether. Had it stayed I felt it would have also created a hole in the story because I had built it up as an important object for opening the box and as such having it float around as I had originally intended would have been illogical. I was going to have Shelley’s Mother slam the box and lock it and then have Shelley come back that night to get the doll. If the key were important Shelley would have kept it hidden, meaning her mother couldn’t then lock the doll away again or Shelley’s Mother would have taken and hidden it meaning that Shelley couldn’t have got the doll back. It’s for these reasons I feel justified in completely cutting this from the film.

Next there was to be a scene of conversation between Shelley and her mother. Shelley’s Mother asks what she has been doing and in response, Shelley shows the doll.  At this point her mother becomes erratic and panicky, pulling Shelley from the loft hatch and sending her off to bed. Her mother then shoves the doll back in the box and slams it shut. It then cuts to later that evening with Shelley being tucked in by her Mother and refusing a goodnight kiss. Her mother instead kisses the pillow.

convShelnmom

It match cuts to a scene later that night where Shelley ventures back inside the loft and takes the doll. She goes back to her room to sleep but when she wakes up in the morning it has gone. She walks to her Mother’s room to find a pool of blood, the doll sitting on her Mother’s bed and her Mother no where to be seen.getdoll

The realisation dawned that it took far too long to set up the story and get to the dramatic event at the end of this scene. In my story Shelley still needs to go to the orphanage, see the children there meet a bloody end and have the story resolve. I decided instead to incorporate the important parts of these boards (Shelley finding the doll, Shelley’s Mother putting it back, Shelley refusing a goodnight kiss, going back for the doll and losing her Mother) into a flash back whilst at the orphanage.