Character Designs

The character, Ivor, appears in the film as a fragile old man but there is a moment at the beginning where we see him in a photograph as a young man with his bike which plays an important part in the film’s climax. This design looks at Ivor in both these stages – very much opposite ends of the spectrum. The fact he is more active and physically engaged as a young man further emphasizes his fragility when we meet him, he has lost touch with his bodily presence and his paranoia for his own safety is what drives the films narrative.

A productive day in...

I’ve been strapped to my desks today collating research, bashing out concept art, planning puppets etc ready for a pre-vis presentation at uni. I will post some of this soon.

The equation for the studio set-up works something like this:

Analogue/transition/digital
Paint & drawing/scanner/computer

Colour Design

Paint

Paint is the 'plastic' element which ties the various storytelling techniques together. The film will use three-dimensional puppet animation, not dissimilar to early Eastern European animation techniques, and will also feature paint on glass. Paint being the binding element and is important in order for these visual languages to gel on screen.

The 2d paint on glass sections will be animated separately and later composited over the stop-motion footage using a programme called After Effects. These overlay animations serve to enhance the storytelling through thought-bubbles and diagrams. The puppet will have a relatively painterly face and the props, sets and backgrounds will have an impressionistic, illustrational aesthetic to them. I have been looking at various painters and approaches as well as researching scenic art.

Amedeo Modigliani

Portrait of Madam Pompadour, 1915

Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.4 cm

Ceroni 57

Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago

Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1938.217

R&D

Research and development is always a really key stage of any project I work on. For this piece there have been various points of inspiration from expressionist paintings to comics and children's books. At the moment I find myself absorbed with photographic reference. This, in hand with researching the psychology of age, is perhaps an attempt to move towards a more rounded and thorough depiction of an old man in hope of having more emotional impact in the final film.

This is an image from the Agnès B collection of images by British artist Richard Billingham. Reproduced from: Agnès B - Richard Billingham Published by Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.

And so it begins

This blog will document the process; the highs and lows, the sleepless nights, the quiet conquests, the details, the brush-stokes, the frame-by-frame rendering of this short, animated film. I hope these records will provide some insight into the making of the film and the reasoning behind the camera.

More soon!