Animation cant do Horror!

I have been thinking about this as my dissertation topic over the summer and its odd that not much has been written about it! I will have to look at film theory and Psychology in horror films, the summer break seemed like eternity and I’m glad to be back getting on with college work for a change. I have settled on my major project this year, the other options were way to big for this and I’m not going down that road again!

I will keep it simple this time, anyway, before I start posting new images here’s a few that were done last term and over the summer break that I didn’t get around to posting.

 

The sword of Gwrnach

The sword was now polished, and Cai placed it in the hand of Gwrnach the Giant, to see if he were pleased with his work. And the Giant said, "The work is good, I am content with it." Said Cai, "It is your scabbard that has rusted your sword, give it to me that I may take out the wooden sides of it and put in new ones." And he took the scabbard from him, and the sword in the other hand. And he came and stood over against the Giant, as if he would have put the sword into the scabbard; and with it he struck at the head of the Giant, and cut off his head at one blow. Then they despoiled the castle, and took from it what goods and jewels they would. And again on the same day, at the beginning of the year, they came to Arthur's Court, bearing with them the sword of Gwrnach the Giant.

Heres a few Photos of Jim and Karl, as well as the police bike and rider. All the main joints move now although They will need a rig, I cant wait to see the final animation!

Talking Dog

“Just because your a robot” Ok, clumsy title but as soon as I read it, I knew I could have some fun and do something different! The scriptwriter was hinting at a look towards something that has been done before, so it was up to us to show how art direction could be original, deviating slightly from the scripts intensions yet it still remains a parody of 70s cop shows and hopefully will add some humour to the concept. “They should all be robots” was my first thought, Robots convinced that they are human and accusing the others of being “the robot,” that in essence is the opposite of “Blade runner” – Robots that look like humans, Jim and Karl are very human in speech and movement They have emotions and feelings too ya know, they just look like huge mechanical death machines! All good Sci-fi asks questions about who we are and what we are doing and these questions came up several times throughout the project!

 

Aliens and the living dead roam the streets of LA looking for victims to feed upon. Not much different from today then really, The La of the future is a ruined husk of its former glamour. Having been ravaged by nuclear war that has wiped out human kind, Jim and Karl are the long arm of the law hunting down these Aliens and Zombie flesh eaters and booking them for Jay walking, sometimes they get to blow there heads off.

Yspaddaden the Giant

 next day the party went to the castle and saw Yspaddaden. He put them off with various excuses, and as they left flung after them a poisoned dart. Bedwyr caught it and flung it back, wounding him in the knee, and Yspappden cursed him in a language of extraordinary vigour; the words seem to crackle and spit like flame. thrice over this happened, and then at last Yspaddaden declared what must be done to win Olwen.

the drawing project is now in the back of my mind as the talking dog project deadline approaches!

I really like the fantastical themes of giants and thought i'd try and recreate the ancient Celtic story of Culhwch and Olwen in story board form, possibly with a Sci-Fi twist, Ysbaddaden the giant is the father of the beautiful Olwen. He is cursed to die when his daughter marries, so when Culhwch comes to court her, he is naturally perturbed. He tries to kill Culhwch a number of times but ends up getting more injured in the process than his aspiring son in law. He then gives Culhwch a series of extraordinarily difficult tasks, which Culhwch completes (at least to satisfaction) with the help of King Arthur and his men. When Culhwch returns, Ysbaddaden is beheaded by Culhwch's kinsman Goreu, whose brothers Ysbaddaden had killed.
Ysbaddaden is described as a typical evil giant of Celtic storytelling, residing in a magic castle that seems to get farther away the closer one gets to it and requiring forks to hold open his eyes. He is one of the most typical and memorable of his type.

This will be an oppertunity to try my story boarding with a less graphic approach I will post some more images soon!

One of the things I really would like to get better at is story-boarding. I had the advantage of having a character already prepared (Helvis) for Kathy's project which presented a number of possibilities for song titles. I had looked at a few Elvis tracks and in particular Blue Hawaii which really captures the Tiki vibe I wanted for his Island in Limbo. I have begun a series of thumbnails for this based around the idea that Helvis would be singing to a mermaid on a rock that performs a kind of hoola dance in silhouette, as the song ends it is revealed that the "mermaid" is actually a washed up bit of old driftwood brought to life by the kings imagination! I did however end up going in a different direction and came across the Album "Fiends of Dope Island" by "The Cramps" this summed up for me images of lost souls meeting to hang out before they face the final judgement and one song in particular conjured up a crap load of imagery I could have fun boarding as Helvis performs on stage. one problem I did experience was how to lead up to the action so I decided to follow a character as he arrives on the island via the trans-dimensional portal in the stone effigy of Helvis. He fails to chat up a girl and ends up loosing his eye balls! the girl was originally designed by Mike and was to good a character to pass up, Cheers Mike hope you don't mind. The beginning isn't as flowing as it could have been as I was just getting into my stride but I think it all irons out as it progresses.

Pre-Production

background design

The Rough Cut

Heres the rough cut of the Phoenix Project, in someways better then the final version.

I've had a while now to reflect on the last project- Animated Exeter Ident.
Overall my feelings are that it could have been a lot better If more care had been taken.
Bad organisation and communication were the key factors that caused things to go tits up.

A quick summary of other factors;
- People loosing interest, perhaps they felt excluded, they hadn't been given enough to do that what they were doing was either menial or grunt work, as a result they didn't care about the work they were doing. I also have extreme difficulty working on things my heart isn't in. but I also can't help feeling let down by tutors and students.
-A smaller team would have helped sort this out as is admitted by the tutors, and then would have freed more people to become involved in another project.
-More pre-production work could have been done, but am still not sure if this would have helped.I took a shotgun approach from the outset, part of my process of developing the look was piecing together other work and seeing what would gel and complement other work, I would then act as a kind of filter and try to fuse the styles so that they worked as a cohesive whole. I don't think people got that and probably thought I was all over the shop with the direction.
They thought I was continually dissatisfied or taking over and changing the work that they had done. sometimes you just need to see it in front of you to know if it works!
The original design aesthetic and research bible fell by the wayside and I let go of the rein's as we careered over shit creek. I have recently discovered this situation is referred to in the industry as a fishing trip!
having said that the emerging result turned out to be far more interesting and "right" for Exeter then what would have been had the style guide been followed, so chaos rules supreme.
Editing was sloppy at best, shots that we had didn't allow breathing space either side and a whole scene of the Zoetrope lowering just vanished which was very important in the flow of the piece.
The music score was fantastic but too long and proved difficult to sync up with the visuals, the sound track is 5 seconds in at the beginning of the animation.
We did the best we could do with the material.
The final animation was apparently well received by the event organisers, so much so that an offer of free tickets was retracted as soon as they got the goods!
being taken for a ride is something most student and newcomers to an industry will experience, it's a shame they felt they could exploit this.