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Entry 2

Well...I hope you weren’t excited for a plat former...because I decided to change the game from the plat former to a game that is more character/plot driven game. The main reason behind this, is when I was researching into other games that tackled the same task of retelling fairy tales in the format of a game I came across the game “Wolf Among Us”. 

Wolf Among Us, is a game which takes fairy tales characters, (Fables) and exchanging the environment and time period to New York in a fictional 80′s. Not only does the game change environments and time period, it also changed the genre of the story to that of a murder mystery.

After looking into this in more depth, it began to inspired me to take a fairy tale and create a more realistic element to it, and create a modern rendition of it, taking the characters from their settings and placing them into a new one.

I then began looking into which fairy tale to focus on and decided upon Little Red Riding Hood, as her story can be interrupted in many ways. It can be read as a story teaching young children to not trust strangers and not be so naive, or could be read to take on darker tones of Pedophila.  

After deciding on the fairy tale, the designs had to be decided upon as well as a plot and what environment I wanted to place them in. Taking inspiration from “Wolf Among Us”, the environment is going to be a urban city area, in present day. After deciding this, I began coming up with concepts for Little Red Ridding Hood. 

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Entry 1

When beginning this project, I spent the first week brainstorming what I wanted to create and what I wanted to show at the end of it. My main goal after graduating is becoming a character designer which is one of my biggest passions in life, so I wanted a project which showcased all my strong suits and serve as a strong portfolio piece I could use straight after University.

So following this train of though, I began of thinking of project which will show not only my character designs skills, but as well as my animation and editing skills all in one. I began thinking of the idea of an animation, but I’ve already done animations as projects before and wanted to challenge myself to create something I haven’t before. I then began thinking of other mediums that would showcase my skills yet challenge myself, which led me to come up with the idea of creating a game. However, it’s too late to teach myself to make actual games and coding, I could go more in depth with in terms of creating a world for my characters to expand in. This is what led me to deciding to creating the assets and plot for a game.

The next topic I needed to tackle was what would be a subject matter of the game. Through researching inspirations, I began looking into fairy tales as they are something I’ve been fond of from I was a little girl. However, when revisiting fairy tales I began to notice how “family friendly” fairy tales have become in recent years, compared to their gruesome origins.  

This realisation is what lead to me the idea of creating a game that would show this contrast. The game would be in a retro plat former style, similar to that of “Super Mario”, with the level, from environment to enemies being based on the fairy tale, like “Shovel Knight”. The beginning of would have a disney like sweetness to it, and as the player progressed the game would become more difficult and gruesome, calling back to its “Brother Grimm” origins.

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Grimm World

This Blog will serve the purpose of documenting my design process as well as my thoughts as I progress.

Grimm World is a project which centres around designing a game bases upon the fairy tale, “Little Red Riding Hood”, originally published by The Brother’s Grimm. The main goals of this project is creating a game which modernising the classic fairy tale while creating a strong lead character.

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation

Entry 7: Progression Video

Here is a video capturing my progression so far through experimenting with textures, editing as well as trying to figure out what way I way I want to progress in terms of style

Through my experimenting I was told that my piece remind someone of German Expressionism, so I decided to begin to look into some examples of German Expressionism and was inspired by the monotone pieces and the heavy use of shadow and light and started to incorporate that into my piece as well.

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation

Entry 6 : Experimentation 

Texture Experients

Background/ Colour Experiments

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation

Entry 5: More Research and Story Board Refinement

Through researching more on my inspirations of American Horror Story, I came across Kyle Cooper, the man behind the openings, and began to look at more of his work for the openings credits of Se7en and Final Destination 5. I became even more inspired by his work, especially the Se7en opening and the use of typography and the grittiness of the piece. With his work in mind i began to think of the style choice I want to make and how I want the piece to be edited.

Below are some images from his work:

Here are the refined Story Boards

As I refined the piece I decided on giving her a story based upon the poem. Instead of a random girl being punished, i reread the poem and thought it sounded almost as though Seamus Heaney himself had an affair with the woman and was ashamed and just watched from a distant as she received her punishment. There was also context added to the environment where the story takes places, in connection with the new identity of the girl and my perceived feeling of the author. The setting is now based in a magdalene sisters laundry, sent their by her lover to keep his secret hidden, and punish the girl for tempting him. I need to be careful though, as I need to make sure I don’t offend anyone or upset someone with this story, so the plot is very hidden.

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation

Entry 4: Storyboarding

I’ve decided on creating an animation based on the Punishment poem, as I feel like it would challenge me, as well as showing I can do a wider range of things, other from the sweet characters and comedic animations I’ve made previously.

I began with jotting down some concepts for story boards, below is some images of the rough concepts and ideas:

While drawing the original concepts, I wasn’t focused on plot but rather on just creating imagery that was creepy and would cause unease within the audience. After looking over the concepts I realised that there was an issue as the audience wouldn’t have a a connection with the piece and what would keep them interested or make them care about the girl. Another thing I had to consider is who is my audience, who can I show the piece and if I would be even be able to post or show this piece to the public openly without an age restriction. The next stage of the project is to refine my story boards and begin experimenting.

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation

Entry 3:  Inspirations for Punishment 

While the pervious entry focuses on the inspirations of Twice Shy, this one is focused on what inspires what my style choices will be fore Punishment. 

The contrast of inspirations is quite something when it comes to what is inspiring me for the Punishment piece. When reading the piece, the way it would play out in my head is flashes of the scenes of what the poem describes would show in a creepy horror reel fashion. Instantly I thought of the American Horror Story openings credits and how the style of the opening is in a found footage style while the actual visuals look as tho they’ve been recorded on old film.

Below is a link to the openings :

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=american+horror+story+murders+house+opening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfHICVGZoes

I wanna capture the seem sense of unease the opening create through it’s quick footage and eerie editing style as well through the use of loud uneasy audio. If I would to choose this poem, it would revolve around the woman the poem describes and show the things that happen to her from her view in a horror-esk way. This piece would be less story based than twice shy, and would focus heavily on editing and visuals.

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation

Entry 2 : Inspiration for Twice Shy

As I perviously mentioned in my first entry, I had a very instant mental image of what I wanted to do for both of these poems. For twice shy, the animation would revolve around a young couple as they progress through their date, along the way, thing mentioned in the poem (the scarf and shoes for example) would be highlighted. In terms of style, I would heavily be inspired by a pieces of art I’ve seen online, sadly I can’t seem the find the original piece nor the artist’s name, but I’ve added image which gives of the style I wanna create the piece in:

As you can seem from the images, the piece would be in a high contrast style, which the background being bright and full of texture yet the couple would be silhouettes, and be quite basic in detail. I’m so attracted to romantic vibes this style creates, while allowing the viewer to imprint on the couple.

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Innovation Moving Image and Animation:

.Entry 1: Research

When beginning this project began with researching Seamus Heaney, a famous Northern Irish Poet. I read some of his most well known poems and from all of the poems I read, only two stuck out in my head. Twice shy and Punishment. While I read these two poem I was able to picture in my head how the scenes would play out to me, one was light and romantic while the other... well let’s just say it wasn’t as pleasant. 

Below I’ve included both the poems:

Twice Shy

Her scarf a la Bardot, In suede flats for the walk, She came with me one evening For air and friendly talk. We crossed the quiet river, Took the embankment walk. Traffic holding its breath, Sky a tense diaphragm: Dusk hung like a backcloth That shook where a swan swam, Tremulous as a hawk Hanging deadly, calm. A vacuum of need Collapsed each hunting heart But tremulously we held As hawk and prey apart, Preserved classic decorum, Deployed our talk with art. Our Juvenilia Had taught us both to wait, Not to publish feeling And regret it all too late - Mushroom loves already Had puffed and burst in hate. So, chary and excited, As a thrush linked on a hawk, We thrilled to the March twilight With nervous childish talk: Still waters running deep Along the embankment walk.

Punishment

I can feel the tug of the halter at the nape of her neck, the wind on her naked front.

It blows her nipples to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging of her ribs.

I can see her drowned body in the bog, the weighing stone, the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first she was a barked sapling that is dug up oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head like a stubble of black corn, her blindfold a soiled bandage, her noose a ring

to store the memories of love. Little adulteress, before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired, undernourished, and your tar-black face was beautiful. My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeuur

of your brain’s exposed and darkened combs, your muscles’ webbing and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the railings,

who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge.

While reading these poems I instantly knew that I wanted these to be animated, but both would be in drastically different styles, requiring different skills and will challenge me in different ways. If I’m to be honest, at this stage of the project, my main issue is deciding which poem I want to go for as I’m very interested in both of them.

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3D Stimulation- Character Modelling Rigging and Animation Entry 3

Final Animation

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3D Stimulation- Character Modelling Rigging and Animation Entry 2

Beauty Shots

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3D Stimulation- Character Modelling Rigging and Animation Entry 1

Reference Page 

For this character I wanted to set myself the challenge of making the characters face non emotive, so all the emotions had to be expressed through body language. 

I wanted to convey the personality through certain movements and activities, for example, having him dance will show how goofy his can be, of him peering over to express his curiosity.

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Moving Image Entry 5

Final Animation

https://vimeo.com/216972013

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Moving Image Entry 4

Animatic 

https://vimeo.com/216971718

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Moving Image Entry 3

Storyboards

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Moving Image Entry 2

Concept Storyboard Sketches

Here are some concept storyboard sketches where I began to plan out the animation.