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.

Experimental - Raw stages.

I decided to take the paint technique further for my final experimental animation, I have now shot the raw images but they do need a lot of work over the top due to imperfect conditions, but such as life, i am still determined to make it work.

Here are some separate images from the actual animation i took, so you understand what's going to be happening!

Character Designing.

Here are the as close to final designs that i have come up with as of so far, obviously we still need to discuss them as a group so i imagine tweaks will be made. I wanted to go for quite a lanky stype because i thought this would look great for the end scene of our animation where they are underwater and it would allow us to move them in a very smooth, flowy, style. Also they are children, and children are still growing so always look a little awkward.

Narrator, scale, colour. 

Children, older girl, younger lad. 

Sea Project Anamatic 1.0 - The roughest of the rough. Except sandpaper, that's pretty rough.

Our first ever anamatic for the Sea Rescue Project, i understand that this is late but so is my Chinese food so i guess we all lose a little bit.

We admittedly did not leave enough time to put this anamatic together, having so many separate ideas we had not really got in complete order and put them together yet, therefore we drew this up in hope that it would show the story line we were trying to reach for, something serious and perhaps a bit dark.

These images were only drawn up in blue pencil and then the black i put on at the end on photoshop, with a mouse may i add.

Anyways, enjoy and i hope you are able to understand from this the sort of mood we are going to try and obtain. Cheers.

Well done for getting this far, here is your reward. Anamatic 1.0 - Rough

Sea Rescue Project Transcript.

"It was a beautiful day. I remember it specifically. Got down onto the beach after having a nice walk, and uh, sat on the sand dune and just happened to look up and down the beach. Just scanning and looking for the best wave where I think I could go in. What caught my eye the most was two children actually in the water. They were trying to swim but were actually going backwards, very very fast. And when I mean backwards they were going out to sea. Erm it was probably one of the strongest rips I've seen and unfortunately those kids were in it."

So that's is, 30 seconds long with a bit of an awkward ending. We are thinking about ways to work around this by adding extra sounds and a change of mood at the end, this will give us some extra time and the ability to incorporate an ending to this story.

Paint Test Animations.

My second Experimental Animation test was no less frustrating that the first but this was mainly because i forgot to turn off the auto turn off function on the camera so the first test is a result of me getting flustered with the paints, therefore taking an abnormal amount of time to get the next shot taken, therefore the camera, which apparently has attitude turned it's self off.

It wasn't easy to shoot this, mainly because no one was in at the time so i had to use my own hand, which limited me to being a one handed person which wasn't easy when you are painting on yourself and taking pictures and trying to see in the actual screen if your hand is actually in the shot. Thankfully, it was. Also, i think i might be allergic to this particular brand of paint, or maybe its just not designed for skin, it's probably the latter to be honest.

Paint Test 1.0 - 

Paint Test 2.0 - 

Paper Crane Test Animation 2.0

So, just under 24 hours and a lot calmer i have re-shot my Paper crane test animation with a new, much sturdier slightly less poor mans's line tester that i created. It's worked much better for me and stayed a lot stiller during the photographing. Here is the next generation animation test for you.

Paper Crane Test Animation 2.0

Paper Crane animation test - 1.0

This is my first animation test, and it caused me large amounts of frustration, mainly because i had to make a tripod out of cardboard and towers of boxes and books because i am currently without one. In theory it's sort of a poor man's line tester. It is mainly for this reason that the bottom of the crane dissipear  out of shot I plan to re-shoot this tomorrow if i have the time with a new line tester support i have made out of a piece of wood, which should be a lot more sturdy and allow me to see the screen easier while i shoot capture the images. 

Secondly on my first (out of 4) attempts at shooting this my mind went blank on how to actually fold the crane, this caused me great amounts of annoyances considering i had to fold 50 of them last year for a wedding. After a certain amount of panicking at the prospect of losing my mind it came back to me during a leisurely episode of come dine with me. 

Lasty i am still unsure of how i feel about the timing, but there isn't too much i can do about this until i have installed premier onto my computer for Windows Movie maker is currently all i have access to which isn't ideal. 

Anyway, here is the actual thing i've just written an essay about. 

The 1st test- 

Character Designing - Progress.

Over the Easter break i've been working one some Character designs for our Sea Project animation, here are some of my ideas and progression towards ideas that are nearly ready to submit as a possible final idea. It's been fun doing this it's sort of been my first taste of designing a character to fit into a story and we have agreed that we all like the style of the final image here so that shall be what i work with.