Foam, fabrics and fun

The new storyboard has just been printed from the new animatic, tiny hands scatter the table-tops, and Ivor has a hunch. James Hadrill has joined us and is busy making the costme for the puppet. We sourced various fabrics with small weaves from calico to cashmere. Ivor's clothes are quite dull in tone to help convey his faded spirit in the film and to contrast the scenery as it changes around him.
Next up the hands are to be painted with latex, the shoes are to be made (out of some old tights!) and I'm working on Ivor's head which will be made out of various materials including papier mache.

Emma-Rose in the studio putting the new storyboard together and James Hadrill in the workshop trying out costume tests on the puppet

Story

The past couple of months has been spent developing and refining the story along with research, various visualisation tests and making full-designs. What is perhaps the sixth version of the animatic has just been finished and model making is under way. The puppet, standing at around 24 centimetres, is made from brass tubing, aluminium wire, foam and fabric.

Kit Wilson, the film's composer, has sketched out some brilliant music over the animatic which acts as dialogue throughout the film, tying the various visual elements together and drawing the audience through the emotions of Ivor, the film's protagonist.

James Hadrill, a fashion designer from London, is coming over soon to make the costume for the puppet as myself as model maker Emma-Rose create tiny picture frames, paper trees, cardboard plant pots and more to populate the world of the film.

Visulisation

Three-dimensional painting: pre-vis of the world

A great deal of time has been spent testing out various techniques, approaches and methodologies in order to bring the story to life. The challenges I set myself with making this film were to tell a cinematic story and engage an audience on an emotional level through very humble materials such as cardboard, fabric and paper. These concerns follow on from a film I worked on last year, We Weren't The First Ones Here, where this idea was pushed to a potential limit in terms of using paper to tell the story and utilising the white sheet as a blank canvas.

Character Designs

The character, Ivor, appears in the film as a fragile old man but there is a moment at the beginning where we see him in a photograph as a young man with his bike which plays an important part in the film’s climax. This design looks at Ivor in both these stages – very much opposite ends of the spectrum. The fact he is more active and physically engaged as a young man further emphasizes his fragility when we meet him, he has lost touch with his bodily presence and his paranoia for his own safety is what drives the films narrative.

A productive day in...

I’ve been strapped to my desks today collating research, bashing out concept art, planning puppets etc ready for a pre-vis presentation at uni. I will post some of this soon.

The equation for the studio set-up works something like this:

Analogue/transition/digital
Paint & drawing/scanner/computer

Colour Design

Paint

Paint is the 'plastic' element which ties the various storytelling techniques together. The film will use three-dimensional puppet animation, not dissimilar to early Eastern European animation techniques, and will also feature paint on glass. Paint being the binding element and is important in order for these visual languages to gel on screen.

The 2d paint on glass sections will be animated separately and later composited over the stop-motion footage using a programme called After Effects. These overlay animations serve to enhance the storytelling through thought-bubbles and diagrams. The puppet will have a relatively painterly face and the props, sets and backgrounds will have an impressionistic, illustrational aesthetic to them. I have been looking at various painters and approaches as well as researching scenic art.

Amedeo Modigliani

Portrait of Madam Pompadour, 1915

Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.4 cm

Ceroni 57

Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago

Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1938.217