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Research 1* Diving into the theme and environment
Research 1* Diving into the theme and environment
Here I dive into what I want to do with the project, expanding on my romance/horror theme. I go around town and places I know to start creating ideas from the images and choosing what I think will be easy to do for my project and what idea can be interesting to execute.
Going around town
Going around town
To get Inspiration for the plot of this short animation, I've looked around Ipswich and gotten pictures of areas along with drawings and sketches. I will create ideas with these specific areas and experiment with storylines.
All of these locations are in town, they are all outside yet I did draw some indoor areas too.
I mostly focused on areas like churches or cafes/restaurants or run down stores. This is because they go under horror and romance themes. The areas you can eat are usually places people would go on dates and I choose churches for their love for marriage and overall heartwarming community. The run down areas are to express some creepy factors that I could use.
I started to create ideas on a board after my research of looking around, at first it was the idea of restaurants and dates but I started to brainstorm the idea of churches.
Cafes and restaurants, some were overrun with people whilst some silently waiting for customers or a run down place with history plastered all around it. Each area gave inspiration for the project.
Churches up-close have a lot of history when carefully inspecting, this can be seen through the structures outside being made with an intention of art and the way marks, moss and damage is noticeable. Or the beautiful put together stained glass.
Painting the areas
Painting the areas
Painting/sketching/capturing areas that inspire me or been to are insanely important with development for stories. Painting helps with expression and emotions, so practicing painting backgrounds can give me a spark of interest of going forward with a theme, especially how I'm already stuck between certain buildings that have different approaches for stories.
I painted some from pictures and some when being inside, like churches that have heavy amount of details that I wanted to show through patterns and squiggles. Experimenting with ways to present things.
IMG_4849.mp4When passing this coffee shop, I realised the lighting was so pretty and warm compared to the outside. This made me wonder when it came to my animation, the use of colour and when I make my thumbnails how I will use colour to show contrasting emotions and feelings throughout scenes.
I made sure to capture the warm lights of the environment as this will help me create strong contrasting backgrounds when I come to make thumbnails.
I want to do many of these environment drawings. as they will help me practice environments and understanding how to simplify parts. It also helps me build a setting for future characters.
Picture of my friend sitting peacefully in Boba shop. I was practicing people in environments. This is also to help me put my characters in settings too.
Church near my house quick study. I did these studies pretty quick so I could get the hang of drawing structures like this and get used to making really quick pieces that present an environment, this is so I get better at it when it comes to making the animation's backgrounds too.
I sketched a stained glass window, trying to look at how I could simplify it for future backgrounds as churches have super intricate designs. As backgrounds can be something I also need to think about when it comes to my animations as backgrounds show a lot of context on where the character lives or is.
When going inside the churches, I noticed a lot of art which could give me ideas about showing my art through stained glass windows if I can sneak it into animation. This thought came into mind due to art or patterns being shown through illustrated windows.
I loved the vibrancy that these windows show as well, which is why when painting this digitally, I made sure that it was the main centre piece. Showing that even if the art piece is all simplified it can still capture what the original area looked like, especially with the target of attention being the bright window.
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I chose this idea solely for the creepiness of stalking, showing that mental health is hard to deal with. I think the creepiness factor of it would be the eeriness of not understanding someone is stalking you. It's also how the stalker does not start coming to terms about their problems creating a harder mental problem for the character to recover from.
I'm going to set this in England as I have enough church locations to be inspired by. The characters are going to be English. It will be set in 2000's.
character design refinement
character design refinement
This is where I start taking the bits from the proposal research and everything I did before, using this to create strong designed characters to use for my animation based on this research. I also do more research around here to refine my character and context of the said character.
Character designing
Character designing
Character design is a key part of story, as designs help compel the audience to become more invested in a story. Characters in movies, stories and films etc. all have designs that correlate to the environment and lore of the character. When artists make characters, they always conceptualize to make visual art of a characters physique, personality and aesthetic.
There are main parts of character design that make a design good, these would be: art style, costume, posture, story and silhouette. Make sure your character fits all categories as it will help easily identify your character to show what it's supposed to be.
There are other steps too, first making sure you do research. This can be for what style you want, the overall aesthetic and the demeanour of the character. You could research into what time period or what the character is based off.
Collecting reference images is essential, being the second step. Finding the same vibe from buildings and environment can also help character design. Also just outfit and other character designs can help.
Last step, is to know your audience and where you're targeting. you would need to include this somewhere for people to understand.
Jackie Droujko, who is very experienced with animation and character design is one of my biggest inspirations for this project. She's a great teacher as she does tutorials on animation, film and concept designs. She has worked on
When designing the character, I know for a fact that the character needs to be simplified. This is to make a design that can still present the character's personality but also have a simple outfit and art style. It's also to help with animating, animating takes a long time.
Droujko again, explains this extremely well. Character design can be detailed but when it comes to a short film we must simplify it as it would be more beneficial to do so.
psychological horror
psychological horror
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror, as it's focus is on mentality of humans. The use of emotions, mental and psychological states to scare the audience.
All of this is to enhance suspense with disturbed mentality, it creates a huge distressing atmosphere for people that seek for this content. This type of horror can have elements of blood and violence but they make sure to center it more around the mentality, making sure it involves dark themes like suspicion, distrust, self-doubt and paranoia. This is because these key features are something humans love to repress or deny, these being darker parts of human psyche.
Stalking in film and Mental illness
Stalking in film and Mental illness
Stalking in film is usually seen as something mild, something although super creepy, it gets brushed off immediately.
Stalking is a complex form of abuse. This is a crime and it can have so much impact on the victim and their families. But I would like to also focus on how the person stalking isn't wanting to be a criminal yet it's a reason of being mentally ill. It's not to excuse the action but also gives insight on why some people being stalked can fall back into the idea of the stalker being a stalker.
Mental health is something that a lot of people do not understand, especially if you can't sympathise with people.
The best example of mental health when getting stalked would be Baby reindeer , It involves a lot of stalking and past abuse. Though a telling story, the stalking part shows a lot of what stalking is rather than what It's portrayed in other media. Although it'll be very difficult to show this in a super short film, there will probably be ways to show that side somehow.
In the show, clips of Martha, the stalker, has a tendency to take things literally which caused a lot of miscommunication between Gadd and his stalker. But without any communication, the stalker still did find his email address without notifying him and completely stepping over his boundary, letting herself in his personal space.
Portraying a person who doesn't understand boundaries and stalker activity is incredibly hard. I feel like it's not shown through a mental illness lens and seen more in a malicious and dangerous way. When someone waters down a person's personal problems, it can be extremely tough to handle stalker situations for real people, not expecting it to be like fiction.
In an interview with actors who portrayed both roles of the story, Gadd being the person experiencing and reliving his story, he starts to go into more detail about how it was to portray Martha correctly whilst also making it clear that his experience was more understood than Martha. Not painting Martha as entirely evil.
Martha is just presented as mentally ill and gives a perspective on stalking where it comes from trauma. This does not give an excuse for stalking but gives a perspective on how it's possible to feel sympathy and understand there's a way to give the person help if you report them to their therapist or someone that can help them improve their life and qaulity.
When Jessica was playing Martha, she tried to act out that depraved side that most stories forget to show. That stalkers are human. Yes they're scary but they are also in the end a mentally ill person that needs help.
story planning and refinement
story planning and refinement
Starting with thumbnails and a small story mountain to help with the storyboard. It starts getting more refined around the story now that we have all the research and character designs. Soon becoming an animatic once the storyboard is complete, I do dive into more tutorials that help with planning.
Understanding how to make a short film
Understanding how to make a short film
When watching this video about how to make an animated film, it really helped me understand how to structure this whole project properly.
She made her short film in two weeks, and for a 30 second animation is what she suggested.
The first things she actually said to make sure to do was write down notes about what you want to make, already doing most research for characters and plot the next step was to create thumbnails.
After thumbnails, it's time to start properly storyboarding it. She said focusing on backgrounds to make sure the characters are positioned where you need them to be. If a character isn't shot in a good way for the story, the storyboard and final animation can look off. The character's actions are always the center point.
Storyboarding also means adding sound effect and audio, both of these acting as a base for you to clean up. She suggested making the backgrounds before starting on the actual animation of the character.
Also making sure characters you made have some sort of reference sheet to help with animating, this makes the character feel more consistent.
After cleaning up, you start working on the animations and keep refining until it's done.
Story mountain
Story mountain
A story mountain is a visual way to help people with making a plot. The structure labeled on these diagrams give a simple way of laying out a story for small projects. Since this layout is super easy, I can use this to plan my story that I want to illustrate through animation.
Exposition is the start, showing the background of a story.
Conflict and Rising action is how a protagonist journey begins, as there is an incident that happens which creates the rising action.
Climax is where the story hits the highest point, until it falls down into the Falling action. This can be the big event of a story.
Falling action is where conflict is usually close to it's resolution, usually having some sort of problem solving element to it.
Resolution is where the story ends, summing up what happened or ending it off very quickly.
Analysing this in other media, another movie from Jackie! This one can be broken down in a mountain format, helping me practice writing my own.
The exposition of the start are two girls who are chased down by the police, then it shows them doing crime which gives us the context of who they are and what they're doing immediately.
The conflict and rising action is them visiting many places and stealing and doing more crime, as they go back home they are pleased with the money yet want more.
The climax is them finding the bank they want to steal from and they get busted by the police so they quickly escape the situation to go to the bank, successfully getting all the money by using disguises.
Resolution of this film is quick as it's them getting the money from the bank and leaving with it without any of the police catching up.
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