A new direction - German Expressionism

We have been in a bit of a rut without Sea Rescue project in that we had the ideas and the styles and the concepts but just no way in which to knit them together that would create an animation and invoked the dark, uncomfortable mood we were going for.
 
This was until we had our talk with Ann last week on our presentations we have to give at the end of the project about how they History and Theory unit of animation influenced our finished film. Obviously, without a finished film this is very hard to consider. Back to the point, Ann mentioned to us that we had to full dedicate ourselves to being really dark or really humorous, and considering our story has very few opportunities to be amusing we went with the first suggestion. She mentioned the influence that German Expressionism had on horror films throughout time, and even today with the likes of Tim Burton, so we decided to take a look and us this style to completely change the visual appearance of our animation and hopefully the mood.
 
I looked at a silent film online, one of the first iconic classics of German expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Everything was generally so creepy from the angular pointy scenery to the pale, tired, creepy looking characters. Exaggerating some features with angular make up or dark shadows really takes and ordinary character and makes them look a little bit off, which is exactly the type of thing we are trying to achieve with the narrator. (Source 1 and 2.)
 

Source 1.

Source 2.

 
I intend on doing a lot of research into these general styles over the next few days in hope of coming up with some characters that have layers to them influenced by German expressionism and the creepy, mysteriousness we want them to have about them.