This Download is a Power point presentation of what i wanted to do for my self led work.
Before L6 Notes (Self-Led-Project)
The past two years ive noticed that my animations tend to lean towards weirdly looking creatures, with my Double act animation i feel being a really great for me Character design wise and i want to persue more character designs.
With this i also want to dive into the world of horror, from the monster designs to the cinimatography and the storys that can be told i feel would be an amazing step forward to work in.
As well as my love for both 2D and Stopmotion i want to murge both my animation loves together within this animation.
Monster Definition
1.A legendary animal combining features of animal and human form or having the forms of various animals in combination.
2.Any creature so ugly or monstrous as to frighten people.
3.Any animal or human grotesquely deviating from the normal shape, behaviour or character.
4.A person who excites horror by wickedness, cruelty, etc
5.Any animal or thing huge in size.
Change of Plans
So after The Group Presentations i was told i needed to focus my range a bit, since my idea of having three seperate animations tackling three different forms of horror, from Paranormal, Human like and Creature based horror that i should focus it down into one film.
With that in mind im going to take a more literal focus and think about what i Find Scary. What is my horror?
What am i scared of?
Normally with me i dont find horror films that scary, due to me knowing im not going to be harmed. I know its just a film and im not in this world.
Im more interested in what the monsters would look like and if they’re cool, are the characters we’re following idiots and get killed in stupid ways? and are the kills or “horror” worth it.
What i am afraid of is a tad bit selfish but easily understandable. Its more of the fear of things happening to me. Its a form of compassion, feeling sorry for someone in a horror film, squinting at the sight of something hurting them or chasing them and feeling fear from what if that was you in that situation is terrifying.
Another thing i am scared of is myself, through depression, anxiety and the feeling of unimportance within the bigger picture. Its not just the fact that im me and i can only have a certain amount of time to do what i want in my life. but what if i fail? what if what im doing results in nothing? what if i dont manage to acheive what i want in life? what if i do and im still not happy? alot of what ifs and thoughts on my past, present and future. And the link to depression is something not only i go through and would be a good topic to dive into and explore.
What is Depression?
Depression is a demon. Depression is a feeling of emptyness, a feeling of numbness, neather happy nor Sad.
Depression waits for you at your low points and makes you feel lower you can hide depression from others but never yourself, you tell yourself that others wouldnt understand
you tell yourself youre fine but depression makes you feel hopeless, depression is tireing.
Depression attacks you whenever it wants, no matter where you are, no matter if youre alone or with people you care about, it will turn a good situation bad.
You want to open up with how you feel, But you also dont want to bother others with your problems, so you stay quite.
Trapped in your own mind.
Character designing (MOSTER)
when it came to coming up with what i wanted from the monster is i wanted to take something familiar and currupt it to become something unatural and offputting. reason for this is the more you push something away from what we would call normal the more unsettling and offputing that thing becomes.
An example of this can be seen in Phantom of the opera. where the Pantom is seen with a mask throught the play, we as the audiance are intriged as to what is behind it so it keeps our interest. and once the mask is taken off and we see the phantoms disfigurement, something unusual to what a normal human face would look like we end up being unsettled and uncomfortable with the view of the phantom.
The drawings i did focus on in the face i wanted to take out as much humanity as i could from the creature, only barely resembling a living person with the bare basic similaritys. i did this by trying to enlarge the mouth (give off a fear that it can eat you in one gulp) or remove the nose (lose the humanity) to shrink the eye size and make the eye socket distinct ( the eye is the window to the soul, making the creature feel souless and evil).
While designing the Monster i wanted to try out adding bandages to the creature. The reason for this is as humans we are naturally curious creatures, we want to know everything. So the idea of having the monster covered in bandages around its face and body was to see if people would be interested into seeing what exactly was underneath these obstucting items.
Example. In Predator the alien is mostly shown invisable as well as wearing a mask, its not until near the end of the film does this creature finally take off its Mask to reveal something even worse. With the reveal it not only gives us satifaction on what it looks like but also we’re now more intreaged in seeing more.
I soon decided to scrap the idea of bandages due to me feeling the monsters face should be on full display, no hiding the horrors but putting it right infront of the watchers face. My new idea was to show off the idea of “Basterdisation of Perfection”. The idea behind this was how everyone has there own insecuritys and fears about themselves, such as there appearance and how they see themselves in the mirror, am i ugly? why do i look this way? maybe i can fix this with botox or plastic surgery.
These things all lead into trying to perfect something that can infact course even worse effects and permanant damage to your own body. Things like stapling your skin to reduce wrinkles, unnaturally smooth and thin skin due to constant meddeling. Showing off to much gums with teeth due to trying to “fix” what wasnt broken.
My next phase was to choose the body shape and design and i went through many diverent veriants of having ether a skinny build or a big build. this was a bit tricky since to make the monster creey it has to as well be feared. which both body types can achieve put through different means. With body horror especially the more painful and damaged the human body looks the more offputting it feels for the audiance.
Final design and why i like it.
For the final design i decided to focus on both types of the body, with having a fat upper section with large skinny arms, with massive creepy long hands and fingers, in an almost dress like bottom. Reason for this is to me i find this massive creature with long arms being able to more easily reach out and grab you, with its bonelike fingers to be exactly the type of thing id call scary.
Character Design (Main character)
For the main character they’re ment to be a substitute for myself. What this means is when it came to designing the character i decided to focus on the face and to add some sort of cover to it. Reason for this is because the idea is to have mask be a visual signal that the character is ether hiding something or is preventing others to look at the real them. This can be due to anxiety and preventing others from seeing the depression behind the smile. Which is why i desided to use the box design. Due to Both its simplistic look and how its very recogniseable and visually interesting.
I really enjoy the box design, having tested out on a body type simmilar to me im starting to get used to the design. The character may not be able to show much emotions due to the mask coving it up, but through body language i feel it will become more easy to understand.
Here are some small scene testers i made to test out what scenes i can make within a bedroom, most of these items are found in my own student room, from a bed to a desk to a mirror. All different ways of how to express what i want. Like if my character is sitting at his desk or the character is lying down im just needed to find a visually appealing way to show off these scenes.
First Storyboard prototype
For my first attempt im happy with how the story goes.
The story is how its been apart of my life for the couple of months, with the character being trapped inside while going through a depressive episode and how they ignore it till it becomes to much and it starts taking over, this is represented by the monster that will gradually get more and more impactful for the character.
These are some extra scenes i wanted to test out since the original i found some of the scenes to not look that great so tried out diffternt angles. While the second image is a new scene i was experimenting with which was having the charcter take off there mask but in its place we see a jumpled up mess of random face parts show up due to the character not liking the way they look.
Storyboarding First Attempt
With the first storyboard i added a repeat of the clock scene. the reason for this was because i wanted it to be shown that this was a new day each time, every time a depressive episode happened the day would end and an almost repeated day happens.
One added thing i was told to change was to add more exaggeration and shots to the scenes since they after a while ended up feeling the same and could be improved.
StoryBoarding Second Attempt
After the feedback i made this storyboard where i changed some of the angles as well as added some extra scenes with the monster since i wanted his presence to be shown more than the previous storybords. One of my Favorite shots i made was having the monster rap around the characters arm before a longshot of the monster forming into its body.
500 word (So Far)
In the Viva Meeting I got the responses that maybe i should change the 2D character to 3D since the character is seen most throughout the animation, it helps keep with the model and would help lend itself way more with lighting for the scenes. While having the 3D character become 2d for more outlandish shots.
This is something to consider since stop motion has the level of realism that would lend itself nicely within the real story of Depression I am trying to tell.
But on the other hand, stop motion also hands itself very well within horror, having the Monster be stopmo with the lighting being dark with only glimpses of light would make the creature stand out against the 2D backdrops.
Another argument was I was expecting to have the objects such as the desk, Bed and clock all be 2D, but if I Change the 3D character to 2D do I then also change the 2D objects to 3D or just leave them as it is.
Definitely something I should think about. Possibly after I have finished my Storyboards so I am aware on what i need and what i should change.
Another comment I am going to talk to heart and investigate more is to delve deeper into Depression, such as medical information, others accounts on the topic and even see into organisations and charities, this is due to me only focusing on my own thoughts and experiences and as well and good that is, it’s also important to check out wider viewpoints and with this added knowledge it would help out my understanding on what i want to create for my animation.
Final StoryBoard
For the final storyboard i edited the phone scenes because i was told that looking at phones or a computer and other tecnology that tends to look boring, so with that i changed the scenes slightly to add more interesting looking scenes.
I also edited the ending a bit to look more dooming for the character leaving the story on a more sad end, since most endings within films and tvshows are happy ones and id prefer to deviate from that.
Animatic
Animation styles and Inspirations
While in the meeting i was asked about working within 2D and 3D during the time i thought i would be able to work from home doing 3D work, this unfortunatly wasnt something i could have done.
So with the knowladge i would be focusing on 2D i looked at films, animations and scenes i loved that would influence my work.
With films i looked at old horror films such as Psycho (1960) and Frankenstein (1931) due to there use of camera angles and the use of darkness adds mystory to the films.
Im also a big fan of the simple gray colour sceme, makes the whole films seem washed of life and adds more to the spooky tone of the films, whas that a monster of just a shadow?
while with Animation i looked at and found love were by a youtuber named Mamamax who made these simple but really stylized animations where he would talk about a topic in a melancholy and sad way which really added to the videos he was making. With titles of Ugly, Lonliness, Depression et cetera, you can see he dives into some hard topics which im a fan of viewing.
The other Animation that hits home for me was the animator Don Hertzfeldt. Now ive known about him for most of my life due to his REGECTED sort which dived very heavily into Dark Comedy. While id like to take a look at his more serious work with the film its such a Beatuiful Day. In this film it talks about depression, loniness and the ever present longing and hopelessness of the universe, lets just say i was hooked throught the film.
From the animation making everything seem claustrophobic to the simple black and white colour scheme before hitting you with something important fully in colour is very visually pleasing.
Thoughts so far.
So Far im Pleased with how i am doing and im happy with how my animation is coming along. But to take things back a bit with all that is happening due to lockdown and covid everything started to feel exactly how i was doing in my animation. I felt this mind numming fog loom over me constantly and with no one to really talk to in person it really had a negative effect on my mental health. This is why i wanted to make this animation to in a way, put what im feeling to some sort of understanding, maybe some closure, but mostly to be able to show and express my feelings out to everyone else. Doesnt matter if no one else understands or even knows what im talking about. Just the fact im putting this small bit of myself out there is more than satifactory for myself.
Final Animation
Final thoughts
With the animation done im happy with how its turned out. I enjoyed using fifferent shades of white, black and gry to create a dismal, unhappy setting. I thing think the small uses of colour adds alot to the scenes they are in really emphasising that these are important.
Finally while animating i decided i really disliked the ending. I know i said previously about wanting a more bad ending, but then i realised that within horror its always best to leave things up to the imagination. So by the half way point i dropped the ending, and left it more at a cliff hanger. leaving it up to the audiance to decide how the story will end.
The Animation Blog 