funny example of how audio can totaly change a scene


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE7nvnw_d9w#t=35

Short Story Synopsis

Dale has been suffering from an acute state of insomnia for the last few weeks. He thought it was nothing at first but he has being losing more and more sleep. On this particular day he had visited the doctor who prescribed him some sleeping pills which have been washed down with an ill advised bottle of wine. As Dale watches his clock slowly tick away from the comfort of his bed he has no idea of the ordeal that is brewing deep within his dreams.
Dale falls asleep and falls into a really vivid nightmare. He is running as fast as he can and doesnt know why but can feel something sinister and terrifying bearing down upon him. He is straining to run fast but it feels as if he is running through water but he ploughs on as fast as he can. Walls are closing in on him; he is lost in a maze. He takes a left turn, then a right, then the path forks and he turns again, around and around it feels as though he is going in circle. There is no logic to this path. He is lost. He turns a sharp corner and glances behind and runs into a web. He is stuck fast staring helplessly down the path he just came from and he starts to hear a ticking noise. He can now see what he was running from; It looks like an old man walking with a crooked back, cane in hand, covered in a dark robe. advancing towards him. The figure is familiar but terrifies him. He struggles desperately to get out the web which just traps him more and more. The man stops and seems to retch. Suddenly eight clock arms shoot out of his mouth and a spider emerges from the man who falls away like a discarded husk. On the back of the spider gleams the visage of a skull.
 So begins a long night, face to face with fears to chill the marrow from the bone, as Dale will have to confront his deepest fears trapped within his own mind. Will there be day after this night, can Dale conquer his fears or will he be driven to his deadly fate?

style and tone

The story is of facing fears so for the most part the animation will have a dark sinister feel, very little bright colours will be used and a lot of muddy darks will fill up space. in my head i can see a sketchy art style, purposely using many lines insted of clean ones, maybe taking advantage of the life art techniques we have been using. i might try some kind  of camera shake or sharp noises to add to the discomfort.

Characters

The main character of the story will be a middle aged man, that has had something change in his life, which brings on the episode of the dream. he will be facing an old version of himself, which will give birth to his fear of death, which will be represented by a phobia of spiders. in a way the laberynth is also a character. at the moment there are no other characters but i think that will change.

here are some possible poster images, i still dont have a proper working title for the short so i will be calling it Nightmare.

 

This image here is my personal favourite, although maybe mixing elements from the first one would also make an intriguing poster.I feel though that the last image contains more of the elements that appear in the story.

Mood Board Short Story

short story

there are many ideas from our group sessions that i really liked, firstly the feel of the piece, early on i started to see what  way the animation might go, the kind of style that might be incorporated. Some of the imagery that we came up with was very interesting and striking, so basically i will be staying very close, at least for the time being, to the original story.

here are a few movie posters that i feel really get across the kind of feel to the piece that i want to emulate.

i chose these particular posters for the atmospheric colours used and the similar themes that are present in the movies.Nightmare on elm street is an obvious choice because of the idea of horror present in the dream reality. in my short story the character will be living his nightmare.
The image of the claws is also something that i have in my head for some of the imagery that il be using.
the exorcist poster was chosen because of the great composition in it, simple but very effective, gloomy sinister feeling. Silence of the lambs use of a moth with a skull on it also speaks to me as i will also be incorporating a creature with a skull adorned on its back.
The thing is one of my all time favorite movies, and i like the image in the poster being mysterious.

The Story
 
Dale suffers from an acute state of insomnia,He thought it was nothing at first but for the last few weeks his being losing more and more sleep. On this particular day he had visited the doctor who prescribed him some sleeping pills which have been washed down with an ill advised bottle of wine. As Dale watches his clock slowly tick away from the comfort of his bed he has no idea of the ordeal that is brewing deep within his dreams.
 So begins a long night, face to face with fears to chill the marrow from the bone, as Dale will have to confront his deepest fears trapped within his own mind,a vast tangled labyrinth with no end, a sinister figure relentless as time, a formidable monster spinning webs of fate, cutting the strings to this mortal coil. Will there be day after this night, can Dale conquer his fears or will he be driven to his deadly fate.

Christmas Card

For this project we were given the task of creating a short animated Christmas Card for LIT.

I started researching into general Christmas imagery and traditions looking up colours and various Christmas things. I started looking at the idea of the Christmas dinner because it is such a pivotal part of the Christmas day. I started researching how different cultures approach the Christmas dinner in different ways. These different recipes for Christmas dinner started to come together and I started to make characters out of the food. I came up with an idea that it was going to be interactive, like a one armed bandit- type machine where you would pull the lever and random dinner recipes starting with appetisers, main course and dessert would appear, but this would have been too hard and beyond my current skills. I stuck with the dinner idea as I liked the idea of very different dinners from our traditional one. There is such a variety around the world that I was previously not aware of. I wanted to incorporate this into my animation. I researched further into the different dishes served in a number of countries and picked out ones I liked best like in Iceland where they eat reindeer, Japan where it huge tradition now eat KFC and people have to reserve this weeks in advance. In Sweden they enjoy Grogg, an alcoholic drink, in Australia they would most likely have a barbeque and perhaps some 'shrimp on the barbie.' I found it interesting in Argentina they serve peacock.

 

After my initial storyboard as seen above, I realised that more dynamism needed to be infused or else the animation would be dull.  

I was working different angles and delivery systems and ways the food would come together to infuse some excitement into the animation instead of it just being a conveyor belt of food. In the end the final animation would have less countries in it but more variations in how the food was presented. 

IDI Project

For this project the brief was to make an animation sting for an introduction to a certain design category for the IDI awards. There were several categories to choose from; fashion, textiles, product design, craft product, etc. To begin with I drew up a mind map and went through some possibilities of using old maps of Limerick. I went around Limerick taking pictures of the old maps to get some inspiration.

I moved away from that idea but in a way the idea of using something old stuck. After this I started working on the idea of using a blacksmith and forge to represent the creative process and quickly came up with the idea of juxtaposing the idea of the blacksmith with a modern creation. I decided to have him toiling away, working hard over an object that isn't revealed until the end, and then turns out to be something small and dainty and modern, not what you would expect.

From these sketches I developed the storyboard and characterizations and planned out the scenes and camera angles.

Then I started to animate it. I drew each frame and then the details that moved and scanned them all into the computer. It was very time consuming. I made a rough one with sounds added in windows movie maker but felt it would look better with colour. Then I coloured them in photoshop. In Premiere Pro I put it together and edited the sound. I spent a long time trying to get the sound right and choose some atmospheric music for it.

 

I was happy with end result.