Emotional Ties: More Reference Images

I've been looking at more reference images today. These are for the lodge/cabin in the woods so I have looked at the exterior of lodges and cabins as well at the interiors. I have also been looking at old family portraits. 

Here are the images that I have collected..

Family Portraits

From looking at these I can see that they hold very straight faces and I can get an idea of the sort of clothing/ hairstyle etc I would be looking at using. 

Exterior of Cabins

I looked at old cabins in the woods and this is what I got. These give me a god idea of the structure of the cabins, what materials are used to build them and how they fit into the landscape. 

Interior of Cabins

Again like for the exterior this gives me an idea as to what materials are used to furnish the interior and what the furnishings look like. The common materials being wood and stone, all natural resources.

Emotional Ties: Moodboards

Before I made the first storyboard image I made two mood boards, one for around the campfire and another for the scary story. These give me an idea of what sort of colours I will be using and what sort of 'mood' and atmosphere will be given from them. 

Campfire

I used some firey colours to reflect the campfire and the glow of the light coming off of it. Some darker colours to represent the night and some brighter colours to reflect the characters.

Scary Story

For the scary story I only used black and white images, some with  textures (to represent the backgrounds) and others that were flat (to represent the hunter). 

Overall I'm pretty happy with these and represent what I want each part of my animation to be like well. 

Emotional Ties: Storyboard Image One

I would have waited until I've finished all of the story board but today I have spent most of my day on the first image. I did it digitally working over my rough image. This is the first proper piece of artwork that I have done completely digitally and I'm pretty proud of it! Was definitely worth get that graphics tablet in the summer. 

I knew that I wanted to create an atmosphere with the light but wasn't quite sure how well I would do it as I haven't really done shadowing digitally but I feel that I've done it justice. Anyway, here it is..

I have to admit the chairs are photos that I found but have painted over them. I'm really pleased with how the characters look do and stand out well in the image. I feel that I didn't quite get the effect with the trees that I was hoping being that there isn't much detail to them, but then as the characters are more detailed it draws your eye towards them more. My biggest fear is that when I animate I'm going to have to not only animate my characters but also the fire, shadows, light etc! 

Emotional Ties: Rough Storyboard

After finally creating the script I have got around to creating a rough storyboard. Here it is...

It's a very long story, I realise this now and making the final storyboard is going to take a while. Luckily I have decided to only do a snippet of the story, most probably the very beginning bit and then I may finish it next year as a project. Overall I am pretty pleased with this storyboard and I don't think there would be much that I would change. 

Emotional Ties: Character Expressions

Today I got round to doing expressions of three of my characters, the three characters being Ryan, Jess and Connor. 

I'm really happy with these, having done expressions with these three characters they feel less like cartoons and more like real children. Also, unlike previous characters I have created I have added in body language too instead of just showing the faces of the characters with expressions. 

Emotional Ties: Campfire and Forest Reference Images

I have decided to research images of campfires and people sitting round campfires so that I can gain a knowledge of how people sit, what they sit on, what their surroundings are, how the fire looks and what effect the light from the fire creates. 

And I also looked at images of forests to get an idea of tree layering, distance, atmosphere and how it may look at night time. 

These gave me a pretty good idea, next I'm going to have a look at lodges/ cabins to know what mine will look like, and old family portraits. 

Emotional Ties: The Hunter

From the research I did on victorian men that went hunting I have designed a character for the hunter in the scary story. I then have tried out a number of styles, designs etc and have developed the character. This is the process I went through..

These are my initial drawings. 

I then tried this style where he is filled in with black and the lines become invisible so that you can see through to the background. To show this I decided to find and example of a background and put the character in it.

I found this quite effective but wasn't entirely happy with it as it's not really like Lotte Reinigers style.

I then digitally rendered him with greyscale, a bit like I did when I drew him into my sketchbook. I liked this, but again it wasn't the effect I was looking for.

I then rubbed the lines out and put him in the background, I quite liked this but again, it's not very silhouettey like Lotte Reiniger' style. 

So then I roughly filled in the character and made him all black, but I wasn't quite sure. It felt very harsh and some parts of the character disappeared in the backgrounds. I also felt it didn't have a very exciting outline. 

So I tried to recreate the character using shapes to make the outline much more detailed and exciting. But I didn't like this either, it lacked the character and personality.

So I went back to the original character and drew out some patterns, made them see through and played with the transparency. I was pretty pleased and quite liked this. However something still wasn't right and it did have that character that Lotte Reinigers has. 

After some thinking I look at some more of Lotte's work and discovered that I had a key problem that was stopping me getting my desired effect...The backgrounds in Lotte Reinigers animations were much lighter than the characters and didn't have much contrast, the example background I used was the complete opposite. So I tested my different styles on a new background...

I still didn't like this one, especially with the background change, it was way too harsh.

This was ok, but didn't have the silhouette effect, the same with the next one.

This one better but again I felt was too harsh, so I changed the transparency...

And I much preferred it, it gave more of the effect of shadows, like the Chinese shadow puppets that Lotte used as inspiration. 

I tried the last one out, and didn't like it as much. 

And so I have decided to use the silhouette character, that you can sort of see through to the background. I feel that it gives a good effect and would also put across the ghostliness of the story well too. I am very happy with the result of this. 

Emotional Ties: First Short Script

This is a short script that I have come up with. I started with the story and then worked around it, mainly looking at where we should be taken back to the scene around the campfire and where we should be seeing the story. Also to know how the characters are reacting to the story and what they say. 

Family Portraits

The four children and Rob are all sitting round the campfire

Rob: Are you all ready for a scary story?

Ryan: Yeah, tell us a realllly scary story Dad!

Jess: Yeah, a really really scary story!

Ellie gasps… ‘Not too scary!’

Ryan: Chicken!

Rob: Hey, that’s enough Ryan, ok Ellie. Connor, Are you ok for a scary story?

Connor: Mmm ok then.  

Rob: Right…

….A long time ago, there was a man who went out hunting in the woods. As night fell, he found himself in an unfamiliar part of the forest. He walked and walked, but he couldn't find his way home. Wandering aimlessly in the dark, he eventually came to a small clearing where an old, ramshackle cabin stood. Tired and weary, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night.

When he came close to the cabin, he saw that the door was standing ajar.

Goes back to campfire to capture childrens reactions. Connor is asleep, the other three are concentrating hard on Rob telling the story.

Poking his head inside, he could see that the little cabin was completely empty, but there was a bed and a fire burning in the fireplace. The hunter threw himself on the bed and decided to sleep there for the night. If the owner came back, he would ask for permission in the morning.

Lying on the bed, half asleep, he looked around and was surprised to see the walls were covered with paintings.

Back to the campfire, Connor is still asleep, Ellie is starting to get scared and Ryan and Jess are still concentrating.

They appeared to be family portraits, all framed and painted in incredible detail. They seemed very life-like and, without exception each family portrait was uglier than the next. The hideous faces in the paintings made him incredibly uneasy. The way they were painted made it seem as if the eyes were

staring directly at him. It was incredibly unnerving.

Ryan and Jess are getting really nervously excited. Ellie has her hands up to her face. Connor is still asleep.

He decided that the only way he was going to get any sleep was to ignore the hideous faces staring at him. So he turned on his side, facing the wall, pulled the blanket over his head and drifted off to sleep. 

Ryan: What happens next Dad?!

Jess: Yes, what happens next?!

Ellie: I don’t think I want to know…

Connor is still asleep.

Well, in the morning, the hunter woke up to find the cabin bathed in sunlight. When he looked up, he discovered there were no family portraits on the walls of the cabin, only windows.

Connor remains asleep, the other  three children gasp. Connor wakes up startled

Connor: Where did that funny looking lady standing behind Rob go?

I'm quite happy with this as an idea, I may change it/ adapt it. And then when I make the storyboard I'll probably adapt it then too as I may have some new ideas etc. 

Emotional Ties: The Man Who Went Hunting

I was going to have a hunter as I had it in my head that the character in the scary story was a hunter, but I reread it and in fact he isn't a hunter, he is just a man that went out hunter. However he is from long ago and so I am going to look up how gentlemen from 'a long time ago' looked like and dressed. From this also, depending on what era he came from, I need to decided what his weapon will be that he went out hunting with.  

I did a number of searches a long the lines of 'old English gentlemen' and this is what I came up with..

As you can see, there is quite a range of styles and eras and so I feel that I need to research eras and decide which one I am going to base my character on. 

The English periods that I came across were Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Tudors, Stuarts, Georgians, Victorians, 19th century to present day. 

I think the majority of these are way too old and too long ago. I think that I will look at Victorians for my man that went out hunting. 

These are the Victorians that I found, I can really imagine the man who went for a hunt looking something like this. It's great too because the photos that I have looked at so far are quite similar to the style that I am going to use being black and white etc, I may use some browns too to soften it and give it a little bit more dimension. 

Next I found some Victorian Hunters or men about to go on a hunt. Unfortunately I could only find 4 images but I feel they give me enough information to work from. 

From this I can see that they like wearing their hats, they generally hunted hares and rabbits and that they used guns....very long guns. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of gun names and so will have to look this one up! 

I discovered that the gun is called a Rifle, and here is two examples.

I feel that I have a fair idea as to how I am going to design the man in the scary story now and shall crack on!

Emotional Ties: Scary Story Style

For my animation I'm going to use two different styles, one for around the campfire with the children and the other for the scary story being told. I am going to keep going back and forth throughout the story switching from around the campfire to the story, back to the campfire etc. I feel this will make it more interesting to watch and I will also be able to gauge the children's reactions. So I know, from creating the five characters what sort of style I am going to use for around the campfire but I need to find another style for the story. I have an idea as to what sort of thing I may do, and this comes from one of my influence boards that I did at the end of January. 

I have a couple of animators and their animations in mind that I will use as inspiration and one is Lotte reiniger and her work. Here is an example..

She used detailed silhouette cut outs in her animation which I think give a very striking effect. Used correctly it can also give quite a mysterious feel to it. 

Another bit of inspiration would have to be the animation of the Deathly Hallows in Harry Potter, which was inspired by Lotte Reiniger...

This was made using a CGI program but still give the same sort of lovely effect, and just as mysterious. 

And finally another piece of inspiration would be Richard Mcguires 'Fears of the Dark' animation that I saw in Bradford Animation Festival, 2011.

This gives a lot of mysteriousness to it, and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's not quite the same as the first two but there is that silhouette-ness there. It's very clever use of light, black and white. 

I think I will be going for the more Lotte Reiniger feel to the story as I feel that it would work better as you would need to see the backgrounds to understand the story a bit more. I may have a got at having the backgrounds darker than the character though to see what sort of effect I get with the story being set at night. I am definitely going to be using cut out for it. 

Emotional Ties: Character Turnarounds

I've finally got around to doing the character turnarounds today! I still need to do the hunter but I feel that I need to get these characters out of the way first, being a different style and all. 

I'm really happy with all of these turnarounds and it seems that I am getting the hang of it as I found myself working faster than before. Once I got into it I quite enjoyed it. I did modify parts of the characters, of which I didn't feel looked quite right, the one I changed the most is Ellie so she doesn't look so stiff 

Emotional Ties: Character Write Ups

I've written up about my characters to help me get to know them better and to get inside their heads so that I know how I am going to make them react and communicate with each other in the animation.

Overall I'm very happy with this and I am able to understand their characters and personalities much better now than I did before.