I’ve always considered myself a fine artist as opposed to an animator having studied sculpture, ceramics and painting at tafe for a few years. So out of interest for this new area I’m exploring, I’ve been trying to do some research into digital artists. But alas, not many strike my fancy. A lot of digital art I’ve seen fall under the fantasy genre. As I was describing to a friend the other day, I find it is all showy and impressive but lacking finer subtlety- Shoshtakovich as opposed to Mozart.

Anyway, one of the pre-production group members did turn out a digital artist that I really like…..here is her link

http://www.lorelaybove.blogspot.com/

And this is a link to an illustrator that I’ve always liked….

http://www.shauntan.net/books.html

Above is an example of a picture from a children’s book called The Red Tree. It reminds me of a surrealist art piece. The colours are lovely subtle ochres. Very charming without any of that flashy stuff!

These days most of my ideas draw from my favourite painting era -impressionaist, post=impressionist and early twentienth centure (Cubism and Surrealism)

Above is an example of one of my favourite artist George Seurat. I was lucky enough to see this piece ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the island of la Grande Jatte’ up close at Musee De Orsay in Paris. I put this example in because it is an excellent example of pointillism. It always reminds me of pixelated digital art or those photomosaic images. One big image made up of thousands of little images……

It is an effect that I think can be imitated easily in Photoshop to give this lovely design aesthetic.

robberbridedroom.wordpress.com

Yes I cannot spell

http://www.giselezeitlerstudios.com/tutorials/painting-faces-lips/

http://www.idigitalemotion.com/tutorials/guest/drawneye/drawneye.html

I found two good tutorials today.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/stage-lights.html

This one is on lighting -specifically spot lighting but  it can be applied to all sorts of lighting.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=22786

This ones a general information page on lighting…

here are some other tutorials which are useful…..

http://www.cooljeba.com/tutorials/photoshop/woodtexture.html

http://www.revver.com/video/246433/tutorial-on-how-to-make-a-wood-grain-pattern-in-photoshop/

Below is a link the fairytale:-

www.familymanagement.com/literacy/grimms/grimms-toc.html

After spending a couple of weeks researching, we finally decided to do a breakdown of the fairytale. We broke it down into storybeats, characters, props and invented a back story. This really helped give direction to our work.

Our new approach was to choose a story beat each. As we drew the storybeat, we designed the props and characters and backgrounds that needed to go with each storybeat.

SCENES

The miller’s home 1

Scenery

-front room

-Kitchen

- the ore mill attached to the side of the house

Props

-Period kitchen utensils, pots and pans, fireplace

The dark forest 1

Scenery

-rockscapes

-Path of ashes

-Bride spends almost the whole day walking through it

Props

-Peas

-Lentils

Backstory

The middle of the forest 1

Scenery

-Darkest part of the forest

-Contains a solitary house which the bride doesn’t like “for it looked so dark and dismal”

Props

-Peas

-Lentils

Inside the derelict house

Scenery

-The most absolute stillness reigns, entirely empty

-Various rooms (whole house needs to be designed) –especially the kitchen/ eating area and cella

-Stairs (to cellar)

PROPS INSIDE THE HOUSE:-

Dining Room

-Empty birdcage

- various weapons –guns, axe, knives, rifles etc

-rocking chair for the crazy old lady?

- mining equipment hung up on the walls

-fireplace

-hooks for hanging things

-table to throw the prostitute onto

-wine glasses –red, yellow and white wine

-whore’s finger with gold ring

-salt

Candle/ gas lantern

-cleeping draught

Kitchen

-cutlery, pots and pans

The cellar

-Stairs (from house)

-Chairs

-Hogshead (large barrel/cask)

Questions

-How many victims have been killed and eaten here?

-How have they been killed?

-Where is the hogshead from? A former owner of the house, or has the gang brought it in?

-Where is the wine from? Is there a wine rack?

-How tidy do the gang keep the cellar? Do they clean up after meals?

-Do they usually sleep in the cellar? Do they have anything to sleep on/in?

-What do the gang do with the torn clothes? The victim’s other belongings?

The middle of the forest 2

Scenery

-Moonlit –silvery ghost eucalyptus trees

-Still contains a solitary house which the bride doesn’t like “for it looked so dark and dismal”

-Peas and lentils have sprouted and show the way out of the forest

VEHICLES

Carriage

Horsies with saddles and riders…..

Donkeys

CHARACTERS

The good characters or victims

The Miller – James Edwards –a stupid but good natured man who wants his daughter to be taken care of.

The Bride – Elizabeth Edwards, simple peasant girl, keeps house for her brother and father. Relunctant to marry Artemis Crowley

Peter Edwards – Elizabeth’s brother, helps out at the mill

The Bird – annoying and prophetic

Old Woman Crowley –neither good nor evil. Mother of Artemis Crowley, warns Elizabeth against the murderer but she still loves her son and will not dob him in.

Mob at the wedding who lynches the evil men:-

-2 jackaroos

-a buffed, bible preaching priest

THE EVIL CHARACTERS

The back story

Artemis Crowley, a sociopath and con-man had to leave England quickly because he ‘resembled’ a convicted murderer by the name of ‘Bartemus Rowley’, wanted for the murder of a prostitute. He uses his money to buy some land and employs the ‘Godless crew’ to work for him –farming, mining for gold ( as it was gold rush time) and odd jobs around the place.

However, times were rough and everyone was poor and hungry

One day little Billy has a farming accident. As he was going to die anyway, he begs the rest of them to eat his body to sustain themselves. Which they do. Afterwards, Susasanah (the house help) freaks out and threatens to report them to the authorities. They have a fight which results in Susannah’s accidental death. As she was dead anyway and they HAD to dispose of her body and they weren’t hungry anymore, a scheme was devised by Artemis to cut off the meat and sell it to the increasing Chinese population who had arrrived in droves to Engles Bird to make their fortunes in the mine. Hence began their notorious careers.

Artemis Crowley – ringleader, bridegroom, sociopath who was methodical and clever, wants to kill in an organised manner by luring out young virgins to his hovel.

Angus McTassel – large, burly man, impulsive and violent, drags victims in from the streets, challenges Artemis for leadership occasionally with his impulsive actions

Babbit –unknown character????

Maddox- chinese, name translates to pile of shit, the interpreter and mediator for the gang to sell the meat to the chinese, the other gang members treat him like a second rate citizen an always makes racist jokes against him

STORY BEATS

1. Artemis Crawley pulls up in his carriage outside James Edwards mill. As he discusses business with James, he sees Elizabeth in the kitchen stirring crud on an 19th century stovetop . He makes an offer of marriage. Elizabeth is unenthusiastic. Artemis leans on the door and points to the hills.

‘My house is in the forest. Come and visit and I shall strewn ashes onto the ground to show you the way.’

1. Elizabeth walks through the forest strewing beans.

1. Kookaburra warns ‘Beware’

1. In the cella, old woman Crawley warns ‘Beware!’

1. Artemis, Angus and Gang returns home dragging with them a whore with a heart-of-gold. They throw her on the table, feed her wines of 3 different colours, rip of her clothes, kill her and cut off her meat.

1. Angus cuts off the finger which flies through the air and into Beth’s tits.

1. Old Woman Crawley calls up from the cellar ,’Bed time boys, look for the severed finger tomorrow.’

1. Old Woman Crawley sneakily pours a sleeping draught in to their wines and drug them.

1. When they are asleep, Beth sneaks up from the cellar stepping over their bodies as she makes her way outside

1. Once outside, Beth sees the trail of beans which have sprouted up and follow them home

1. Wedding banquet. Beth makes a toast retelling her ‘dream’ She ends by pulling out the severed finger.

1. The ‘mob’ lynches the evil gang.

SECONDARY ENVIRONMENTS TO CONSIDER

Engels Bird

- Frontier town/ shanty town

- No authorities, lawless society

- Brothels, grog/ sly houses, some basic businesses such as mining supplies store

- Makeshift homes of scrap wood and metal

The Billabong

- Where the wedding banquet takes place

The Gold Fields

- Props for mining

- Horses

- Loads of chinese/ immigrants in makeshit tents

Here is a cheats way for making a wood texture….

www.tutorialwiz.com/wood/

So I did a few preliminary sketches and decided the least tacky way to incorporate hearts was to do it like a swinging chunky pendulum and make it like a metal locket.

So I had to find a tutorial on making objects look metallic. This provided one way of doing it which could be tweaked and played with to get many different effects….

http://www.pixelpoke.com/tutorial%20two/Realistic%20metal%20effect.html

And I found this tut while I was at it…..

http://www.funphotoart.com/drawings/create-colorful-metallic-balls

Then I went to http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Godfather.html and grabbed the opening segment of the script.

godfather script -opening sequence

So here is a rough broken down storyboard of  The Godfather opening sequence. I probably should have used the storyboards provided in class. Oh well, if good intentions count, I intend to analyse a storyboard a fortnight. Its actually very helpful. I wish I’d done it BEFORE i handed in the animatic.

The drawings are very rough but I see how the director has set up the whole scene in his head beforehand and then just staged cameras at different locations to slowly, slowly reveal the entire scene.

It turned out to be a good idea to do profile, 3/4, front on and back view for the main characters. I ended up cutting them up in photoshop and pasting them directly onto the storyboard. It was a good way to work out which characters need to go where to balance the shot and to create a more interesting design.