Major Project: Preproduction

Stylistic choices

Although that my story is based on Scottish mythology the style of the animation is influence by a few things too.

My main inspirations include:

Song of the Sea (byTomm Moor, 2014)
(Song of the Sea Trailer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jxc7WkC674
 

Secret of Kells (by Tomm Moore & Nora Twome, 2009) 
(Secret of Kells Trailer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw2_HZTuQBE 

 

The Reward (by Suncreature Studio: Mikkel Mainz Elkjær, Bo Juhl Nielsen and Kenneth Ladekjær)
 (Watch full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cw7aAFS5oc)

Some art choices I liked for my film vary, check out my pin board on pintrest for a glimpse of the mood i wanted orginally for my film: Here

Some notable artists whose style inspired my include : 

IniquitousFish (Meredith McClaren)

I love how you can get a sense of motion form these characters, i also how simple but effective the colours are, especially in fig 2.

Fig 1

Fig 3

Fig 2

 Alvaro Ramirez 

Macka the Red Witch

I love the loose lines on this drawing and you can almost see the transformation it Macka can make into the owl

.








The Reward:

Tehre are some comedic scenes in the animation where the characters become superdetailed, I wanted to have a similar thing with my animation too- to keep it light-hearted.

Here is my character and his more detailed state - note i am not 100% definatly using the detail version as it will be very time consuming.

 Secret of Kells Inspirations :

 I really loved the texture of the trees and flower, I did have a forest secene in my film but it has now been cut.  this is the kind of style I would of been going for.


 Song of the Sea inspirations:  

Agian I really liked the tratditional fee of the film and the textures of the backgrounds. here are are some concepts of backgrounds i made regarding Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells.

Forest with Glowing orbs (Photograph, digitally editted)

Concept Interior Background (Mixed Media)

Major Project: Inspirations and Research

I am going to make a post of inspirations, more of a mood-board of my project, lots of my inspirations can also been found on my Pinterest here.

Candle research & reference:

I wanted to have cream coloured candles in my animation, nothing too out of the ordinary, i need to see how they cast light in a dark space and how fast they melt so i will be doing some of my own video reference once i am back at home in a week or so.
In my animatic I have accomplished a good flicker with the flame, i only need to see how it illuminates the room and the wax.

Potion research and reference: 

Potions is a fun one for me because of the shapes of the bottle and the colours i can play around with, there are a lot of interesting shapes, it is just replicating it for the animation, it needs to be simple enough to animate but still look quirky. I feel like the last image is similar to my preference in design.

Hourglass research and reference:

Hourglass from Braid, Number None inc, 2008

Hourglass from Days of our Lives, 1965- present

Wall and floor research & reference: 

I like the cobblestone look but my animation is very dimly lit. I need the references more for the shape and how the bricks fit together as my backgrounds shouldn't be too detailed.

Similarly with the wood look, i have already accomplished what I want in terms of the wood, I used the bottom picture for a colour reference and I liked the cracks but I haven't used it in my backgrounds as again, they are very simple. 

Smoke and cobwebs research & reference: 

I haven't got on to drawing cobwebs or smoke yet, but they are more for the design of my character when he turns into a wraith. - I still haven't settled on a design yet.

Forest research and reference:
 

Here are a couple of images I liked for reference to the forest, being as I am currently revising my premise I doubt I will have a forest scene now -maybe in a future project perhaps. 

Picture references :

I do not own any of these photos or pictures. 

I googled "cream candle" "candle" "cobwebs" and took a lot of images off there, a lot of them were stock photos for shops such as amazon, with no other reference details.

Visual Forms: Sketchbook #2 (Madness)

Rethink.

I have been thinking a lot my subject, as I am not really interested in war at all. It was suggested to me that I could study Romans which is a great idea being as I am currently in Cardiff. They also had a lot of culture and art themselves which would be good to replicate and again there is a lot of Roman history in my hometown so I am never too far way from it.
One thing that really interested me with Romans was mosaics, I remember when I first learnt about them in primary school and I thought it was that best thing ever and had a go at making a few out of cut up bits of paper, I really wish I had taken it further in secondary school when I did pottery. Nevermind. Also my Nan really likes Roman history so I have a beacon of knowledge too.

Roman Mosaic

Alas, although Romans are awesome, they don't really interest me as much as .. pirates. (I, given this gift of knowledge and practically instead choose pirates.. I am a child).

I have a back up of Romans but in fairness my head is all over the place for this project. I have always been bad at sketchbooks I don't know if they should be presentable or just like I usually do them "everything everywhere all in one maybe a napkin or two, oh I drew on this receipt and half  my work is in my note book and there is a bit in another sketchbook -somewhere-" my sketchbooks are currently a mess and I hate ripping pages out to scan them in. I just can help thinking something and putting it in... maybe I can do Roman pirates ? Help.

I am going home soon and I will be going to Liverpool to have a look at the Maritime Museum and a few others in the area as well as aquariums for underwater references. I will be looking at Roman things in my town (they are pretty hard to miss anyway). On my return I will be looking in Museums in Cardiff and Newport which i know have some nautical/pirate-y things and perhaps some roman stuff too. I will look at both and see which I take too better.

Visual Forms: Sketch book.

My ongoing project is my visual studies sketch book which is due in May. To a re-cap I have to study either; processions, market places or ruined civilisation. In previous blog posts I mentioned that the most interesting topic seemed to be ruined civilisations, but it is a visual study - it has to be first hand, making it quite tricky.

Originally I wanted my work to be game based, as the project game about around the time of the release of Fallout 4 it seemed obvious that was going to be my main inspiration, but - it can't, as it is not visually first hand.

My plan has now evolved in to looking at war time technology,  being as we have advanced an awful lot since then due to how much we rely on it now. (Maybe we're the ruined civilisation- joke).

My study will begin with second hand observation, probably off the internet just to do some sketches and perhaps have a read up from some books on typewriters and code machines. My main part of the project will be visiting war museums however being located in Cardiff it is very difficult to get anything war time related at all. My best bet is my visiting home: Manchester.

Here are a few places I plan to visit for my studies, probably over a break or when I can on a free weekend:
I am planning to go to visit a war time museum in Manchester http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-north as well as
http://www.carewcheritoncontroltower.co.uk/
http://www.watchetmuseum.co.uk/maritime/
being as there are no museums or history of ww1/2 in the museum in wales

I have an internal conflict too, as much as the game interests me, war and pretty much everything to do with it in real life is uninteresting to me. But that is bring my personal beliefs into the matter, so we'll not go there.

Another thought; I could scrap the war idea altogether and just use what I have on my doorstep, it is very much a history based topic after all and there is a beautiful museum here in Cardiff.
Although ruined civilisation seems the most interesting, it is also the one that requires the most travel/work; for processions I could use the traffic outside my window, or my footage of the carnival from my home town I got over summer. For market places, there is a very decent market place here in Cardiff and another close by in Newport, however this topic I am not interested in as I find it boring and restrictive (probably because I can see literally no excitement or variation in it - at all)
I would really like to study something that I am interested in, and am able to accomplish (and not be financially strangled).


My previous blog posts:
Oct 8th 2015
Nov 1st 2015
Dec 15th 2015

Major Project: Preproduction #2

Preproduction #2

Premise

Yesterday we had critiques on our story ideas, my story has changed quite a bit really but it does still keep the bare bones of it all (insider joke ;) ).

Here are my rough thumbnails from my story before the critique, I will be working on new ones today as well as altering my written work for premise and format today.

My original story is in a previous blog post 13/02/16, if you would like to refresh your memory.
In summary it is about a sorcerer that doesn't want to dye and takes a potion to prolong his life, however it has adverse effects and he turns into a wraith. Later a forest spirit requests that he goes peacefully into the earth the wraith refuses and the two have a battle resulting in the wraith being forcefully pulled into the earth and becoming a thistle. - It was all based on Scottish folklore.

Instead I got a suggestion off a peer that can nature suck the life back out of him and peel away his flesh to reveal the dark wraith? I thought this was a bit too dark and perhaps a bit disturbing (I am very squeemish too) So instead I think i will use an already existing prop; the hourglass on the desk and make that suck the life back out of him there for making time the enemy not nature. It still need a bit of work and I will be rewriting it over the weekend.

Enough about the story, I have done some character design, it is nearly there. I just need to get a solid construction of the character, draw up the props  and backgrounds also do a few colour tests.

Concept design

A jumble of background swatches and concepts. 

An experiment to make a night sky.

I have done quite a few tests regarding the background for this project, I am still working on the character design.
The character design is something I will be working on, on the train back to Manchester.
Whilst home I am going to find some good background references for a forest and some castles because I know a few places at home that would be perfect!





I did an experiment with a latte I had the other day by taking photos of it and inverting the colours and messing with the contrast and saturation. I think it worked pretty well, I may edit it a little bit; adding a few more stars here and there.

Major Project: Production

Preproduction

I have decided that I am doing my story on Scottish Folklore, or at least based on it. I have written the story in the structure of a folktale; in small chunks. This works well for me and my time management because it means I have formed the entire plot in to 4 bite-sized "episodes", meaning I can add the other episodes on as and when. 

Here is my premise:

An old sorcerer of the forest looks to prolong his life through unnatural means, due to the law of nature his soul is torn and he is turned into a wraith. When the unnatural wraith appears, Ghillie Dhu the forest fae appears to beacon the soul to past back into the earth. The wraith being so warped from nature it retaliates and attacks the fae, supposedly killing the creature.

The wind starts to howl and the leaves swirl of the body of the fae. Ghillie Dhu is not dead, he pulls himself up off the floor his movement is stiff and crooked, his eyes darken and skin crackles, the wind flurries through the trees making branches snap. The wraith flails in terror, Ghillie Dhu opens the earth under the wraith and it curls around it swallowing it whole, the wraiths ethereal claws get pulled through the earth, the wind dies down and where the wraith passed through grows a thistle.

REVISED EDITION, My reasoning is annotated in orange. 

First Episode:

The sorcerer, old and weary, is dying. He looks at his hourglass to find that he doesn’t have much time left and so heads to his position room for a potion to prolong his life, he drinks it and starts to rejuvenate back to a younger state, the sorcerer sees the hourglass is flowing backwards and is happy about this.

This leaves the story with a happy end, the old sorcerer lives and can continue with his magick ways. 

Second Episode:

The backwards flowing hourglass gets a crack in the glass, the youthful process is interrupted and flashes of a skull are seen within the sorcerers transformation, the sorcerer panics. He gasps for air as his hair and beard flitter away, he knocks over the remainder of the potion and collapses on the floor the room is filled with darkness, out from it eventually emerges the warped sorcerer.. He is now a wraith.

Developed further, we see that the sorcerer made a mistake and is turned into an unatural entity.  This connotates that you shouldn't stop what is inevitable. 

Third Episode:

The wraith roams the forest when Ghillie Dhu, a forest fae, crosses his path. The fae asks the wraith to return to the earth.  However the warped wraith retaliates and attacks the fae, supposedly killing the creature.

The fae is a representation of nature, and the sorcerer turned wraith is a representation of man and his power/will/greed to surpass and change natural events. 

Fourth Episode:

In a turn of events, Ghillie Dhu did not perish; he picks himself off the floor and becomes enraged. He grows more and more monstrous, he manipulated the wind to batter the wraith and then the fae opens the earth to swallow it. The wraith is pulled into the earth, the forest is restored back to its tranquillity and a thistle grows where the wraith fell. 

With the last installment the story changes again, the message becomes; no matter what you do to fight nature it wiill come back bigger and better than man, after all we are all still part of the earth.