Hart's Desire Comic

At this stage, rather than developing a storyboard and animatics I have been creating a comic of my deer-man story.
Having cited independent comic book artists as inspiration, and while writing an essay on the relationship between animation and comics, I decided that it might be interesting to initially develop the narrative in comics form. My hope was that this process would help me to develop a more considered approach to the composition and 'scene-craft' of the story that may have been lacking if I had dived into creating an animatic for motion.

Here are a couple of pages from the comic, which I have titled Hart's Desire (get it? A Hart is a name given to stags... aha ha ha, how terribly clever). I intend on building up the artwork a bit with shading and perhaps subtle colour. Click on them to enlarge.

One thing that I have noticed is that I have found it difficult to completely let go of the animator in me: in a great deal of the comic there are only small changes from panel to panel, meaning that I am trying to control the motion and show the reader/audience exactly how things are moving. When I look at other comic books there seems to be the potential for far greater changes in image from one panel to the next (especially in action packed superhero comics) while still creating the sense of a coherent and flowing story. 

Having said that, because this is a 'silent' comic (as there is no dialogue) the story relies even more heavily on the imagery and I think that there is a greater need to ensure that the audience are able to understand what is happening through the sequencing of action. Also, because there is no time prescribed in the reading of comics unlike in animation (when the audience does not dictate the pace of the action), the artist must try to take some control over how somebody interprets the pacing. One way that this can be done is by only changing things subtly between panels to suggest a slower, more delicate flow. The comics of Jon McNaught, one of my favourite comics artists, are often 'silent', 'delicate' and well considered by using this technique of subtle changes. Here's an example of his work.

What strikes me about McNaught's work is that it shows a very considered and effective, highly designed approach. I think that this is what attracts me to it most: a remnant of my architectural education perhaps, as I can't help but think of McNaught as a comics designer rather than a comics artist. I think that my Hart's Desire comic shows some level of this attention to design... because of this I think that it has been a worthwhile sub-project as I'm not sure this would have developed in an animatic. I hope that I can now take pieces of what works well in the comic and filter them into my approach to the animated film.   

Character Design- Old Man

I've just been perusing some earlier concept stuff I did and stopped to think when I looked at this drawing.

More recently I have been drawing my old man in a very simple way: just a bald circle for his head. He looks quite babyish sometimes. I like this older drawing and I think it's mostly because he has a beard! Nothing says old man like a beard.

Since I'm talking about beards... click here for a brilliant celebration of the beard in animated musical form!

Yipee... Animation!!!

Couldn't resist a wee bit of animating.

Here's a little test I did of the deer-man. It's just a simple anime studio rig, drawn in photoshop. 

The quality is awful... so here's a still at full res so you can see the detail that you're supposed to see. (click it for full size view)...

Second Pitch

Here's a bit of a summary of the second pitching session in which there was a chance to develop our ideas and address any issues that had arisen after the first pitch as well as giving us the opportunity to pitch to a new audience member with a fresh set of eyes and ears: Ross McKenzie from Creative Scotland.  

Since the first pitch I have been concentrating on getting my story to work. 

I have come up with a simple structure for the narrative, based on just a few key moments and situations. By stripping the narrative back to these few key moments I found it easier to ensure that there is a story structure that will make sense and, hopefully, be satisfying. This forms a skeleton onto which I can build the more 'delicate', 'human' moments that will flesh out the story and develop our connections with, and understanding of, the characters.

This slide from the pitch (click it for a bigger view) shows the breakdown of the story: the key moments-

1. An old man in the town looks, longingly, to the hills.
2. A deer-man in the hills looks, longingly, to the town.
3. Old man resolves to take to the hills. On his way he finds a shed deer's antler which he takes (and later decides to wear), leaving his walking stick behind.
4. Deer-man is lonely.
5. At some point the old man and the deer-man come upon one another and share a cup of tea (an act of human kindness which triggers the transformation of the deer-man into something less wild).
6. Old man stays in the hills and puts on a second antler which the deer-man has just shed (old man's transformation is self initiated: he chooses to wear the antlers, he decides to become something more wild).
7. Deer-man, encouraged by the human interaction makes his way to the town. On his way down he finds a discarded walking stick... which he takes, leaving his remaining antler behind.

This narrative can be read either as a straight swap for the characters (they each long for elements of the other's life... and in the end get it) or it can be seen as cyclical (there is now an antler where there was one before, a man with a walking stick in town and a man wearing antlers in the hills just as there is at the start of the film) in which case the film's message has an increased 'grass is always greener' tone.

The pitch was received well with a general agreement that this distilled story structure works. The challenge, now, will be the handling of the afore-mentioned more 'delicate' moments that flesh it out. It was Alan's opinion that a particular challenge will be how to deal with the meeting of the deer-man and the old man, one of the most important moments in the film that will also potentially be one of the most dynamic and 'action packed' (though I use the term with caution).

I think that there was a slight concern that the motivations for the deer-man to go down to the town may not be clear but I am confident that, through the delicate moments and character development, I can paint the picture that the deer-man is lonely in the hills and craves the human interaction that, he thinks, can be found in the town. Shots like the panel in which that deer-man is looking to the town will hopefully go a long way to help this.

The Big Boy

I watched The Big Boy by Lee Kyu-tae the other day.

There are a few things about it that I was hoping to have something like in my film.

There are moments in the film like this aerial shot of the town, for example, that are brilliantly restrained and analytical (my new favourite description and a word that I am using in the development of my film). 

These two frames show how varied detail is used depending on how close the characters are in shot. In fact they're pretty much completely different design styles. I think that this is sort of possible because there aren't really specific characters other than the Big Boy himself: there are just townspeople. In my film the character design will remain more consistent, it'll just be the levels of detail and how they are drawn that change. (maybe).

And this frame shows a splitting of the shot into panels (like I discussed in the earlier Paul Driessen post this is something that I'd like to explore: a nod to narrative illustration). It's done quite delicately here which is nice.

The House On Little Cubes

I watched The House On Little Cubes by Kunio Kato yesterday.

I think it's great. I find it very satisfying when there is a clever and creative yet simple concept on which to build an involving narrative.

In this case the simple concept (when I say "simple" I don't mean it in any sense that would undermine Kato's creativity... I don't mean basic... it's difficult to make things simple!) is that a man has had to build his house higher and higher, block onto block, as water around him has risen over the years. This one device forms the narrative for the film and acts as a metaphor for his own life: as he has built higher he has had to build smaller. The bottom of the house which he inhabited earlier in his life, when he had a family around him, is spacious while at the top, where he now lives alone, is a single room with bed, kitchen and living in one.

This film stood out for me because I am trying to construct a similarly simple, analytical device as the bones of my film onto which a more delicate, 'human' narrative can be fleshed out, just as is the case here.

It does contain some 'I'm now all on my own' cliches that I'm not too keen on (and have tried to avoid in my own solitude themed narrative) like staring at old framed photos of your now absent family. Having said that it's cliched for a reason (it works) and it does suit the general mood of this film, one of the main themes of which is memory and loss.

Definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it. I'll be keeping it in mind and trying to capture something of what makes it work in my own film.  

  

Paul Driessen

I've been looking at some of Paul Driessen's animation after a chat with Neil the other day.

What I'm instantly struck with is that his work has a great sense of freedom: he seems liberated from realism and as a result the films are full of fun and creative moments like the sun rising from an ocean horizon and then wringing itself dry in The Water People. I think this is great... after all this is animation so why should we be restricted by the limitations that exist in real life? I'm not sure how much of this sort of thing I could get away with in my film (as I imagine it right now) but it would be nice to inject a bit of this freedom somehow, and celebrate the fact that this is animation.

Driessen's use of panels in some of his films (The End of the World in Four Seasons and On the Land, at Sea and in the Air) is also of interest to me... this would obviously be a fairly literal use of elements of comic strip art which is something that I have previously cited as inspiration. If I'm going to, at points, split my film into panels in this manner I want to do it as a beneficial narrative device that helps tell the story in some way rather than just "'cos I like comics yeah?!". I think that I have actually already managed to justify this to a degree in my sequence of key images where I have split the 16:9 'frames', used in most of the images, into 3 or 4 individual panels where separate things could play out simultaneously (see below). Unlike in Driessen's films, however, where the panels are used to show different places/scenarios at the same time, I have used them to show the same place/scenario at different times (which I suppose is usually how panels of a comic strip function: they are windows through time and less often function as windows through space which Driessen's are).    

Anyway, some things to think about... thanks Neil!

First Pitch

This monday I pitched my film to my tutors.

While  I know that the story needs some work, generally I got some very positive feedback.

I produced this sequence of key images for the pitch and (although it's not finished) my tutors thought it had a very nice graphic style. It was thought that, while the style is simple, I had managed to convey a good sense of place and there was a nice variety and contrast between feelings of being enclosed and feelings of distance and openness.

What I need to address and develop is how the narrative works. I had proposed a set up in which we're introduced to a deer-man creature in the woods and then an old man abandoning the town. We see them each inhabiting the same area while the old man (now rejuvenated) sets up a solitary life in the hills and the deer-man roams lonely in the woods. We eventually get to a moment of transition and revelation as we find that the deer-man and old man are in fact the same person and that we have been witnessing two separate timelines of one life, the old man having transformed through his continued isolation into a wilder being.

A few ideas for where the film could go were discussed...

• To give the film some sort of resolution I pitched that the deer-man would encounter a boy who had also made the trip into the hills. The boy would then take his hat off and reveal that he had a small pair of antlers just beginning to grow and the deer-man would not be alone anymore. This was generally agreed to be unnecessary and felt a bit like an after-thought. So the wee boy is probably out.
• Alan suggested that the characters of the old man and the deer-man could actually be separate characters after all and the film would follow each as they experience their own versions of isolation. They could form a subtle 'relationship' through nothing but their proximity with one another and perhaps a chance glimpse of one another. If this were the case, and I was watching the film, I think that I would question where the deer-man has come from, what is he? 
• The themes of regeneration and rebirth could be quite strong and there is quite a pleasing metaphor to be found in the shedding of a deer's antlers being not a sign of death but of a new chapter in life.
• Jared thought that there was potential for mirroring a zimmer frame to create a set of antlers! I'm not too sure if this was a joke or not.       

There was probably more discussed but I can't remember everything! Should've taken notes. Anyway, plenty to think about.
        

Prologue- Mission Statement!

In my final year of studying animation at ECA I will be making a short film.

I want this film to reflect something of myself: I don't know what I'll be doing in future but I'm aware that this project may prove to be a rare opportunity to dedicate such a concentrated portion of my time to a film of my own. I want to make something that I can be proud of.

I plan to make a film that, as well as animation, is informed by my love of illustration and comics from artists such as Jon McNaught, Tom Gauld and Luke Pearson to name a few. In such narrative illustration, where there is no actual movement (unlike in animation), there is perhaps an increased necessity for strong but simple storytelling devices to communicate the action. These devices may be from layout, character design or graphic style for example. With narrative art there is also, perhaps, a greater need to create something that simply looks good (again animation has movement to capture an audience while comics do not). These are bodies of work that can be held, studied at leisure and appreciated panel by panel as individual works of art.

Narrative illustrators will perhaps only use a few panels to tell their story giving each one a great deal of importance. In my film, by learning from them, I hope that most of the frames will end up looking as if they could be viewed individually as a panel in a comic.  

The film will be set mostly in the isolation of mountains: a retreat from a nearby town. Dealing with isolation (mental and physical), regeneration, transformation, and the need for friendship the film is centred around a character who's emotional and mental state changes with his changing environment and who's physical form transforms to reflect this.

A very short and basic outline as it stands is as follows.

An old man leaves (abandons) the town and goes to live in the hills. As he ascends and spends more time in the hills he becomes rejuvenated. As he abandons more and more of what would be considered 'human norms' and crawls deeper into his state of isolation his regenerated body begins to transform further... into a wild thing... a deer-man-thing.

Here are some initial concept drawings-