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-
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