Character Influence - Major Film

Character Influences

With the character designs of the wolf and zombie, I wanted to do a style that was simplistic and yet would be easy enough to follow on-screen. Taking influence from the works of Genndy Tartakovsky, I began looking into concept art from animated films that featured monsters as the main aspect.

(Concept Art from Hotel Transylvania; Artwork done by Pete Oswald and Carter Goodrich)

These concepts where the first pieces of influence I took inspiration from, attracted to the concept of horror creatures in an unexpected situation. 

(Art by Tracy Liang)

(Art by Maxime Mary)

Some examples of influence I used in developing my zombie character; here I witnessed the ghoulish creatures express a quirky nature despite their normally terrifying stereotypes and I wanted to test what strange designs I could come up that where as half as interesting to look at as these character designs where for me. 

Animation Short - Degree Animation Idea

Animation Idea;

I plan to themed my animation idea around dark humour and a parady on cliché horror. The general idea would be that a werewolf and zombie fight over who gets to eat the baby. The story will be loosely tied together by several gags and a minimal story line. I want to focus on character design and character animation mostly, as that is what I am mostly interested in.

Influences

Courage the Cowardly Dog

Courage the Cowardly Dog is an example of dark humour turned into a cartoon and proven to be quite popular.

Dexter's Laboratory

I like the character designs of Dexter's Laboratory as the are simple in shape yet the are detailed.

Early Concept Art - Major Film

Early Concept Art

The Werewolf

The werewolf is the much larger character, compared to the zombie. He is menacing and  meant to look thickly furred, however he is an idiot, with the mentality of dog. Throughout the animation he easily becomes distracted and it is his lack of observation that gets him shot by the child.

The Zombie

Though undead, the zombie character is surprisingly spry for the state of his rotting form. The zombie is the intelligent individual of the main duo, as he is the one to figure out how to open the window and devises more thought out plans to distract the werewolf, who resorts to violence when he finally figures out he is losing.

Concept Idea to Early Story Outlines - Major Film

Concept Idea to Early Story Outlines:

Originally, the story I had in mind at the beginning of the summer was a story of a creature trapped by an evil wizard and would eventually be freed by a young child who finds the creature and helps to defeat the evil wizard. This was quickly scraped due to the fact that it would be too long and would run far over the 90-second limit we had on the project.

(Characters of Hotel Transylvania 2)

The idea for the monster vs. baby concept, the first solid idea for the animation short, came to me when I saw Hotel Transylvania 2 for the first time over the summer. I was influenced by it to try and do a comedy around monsters interacting with each other or humans, but wanted to go with a more darker sense of humour with it. The first idea was a werewolf that hunts a child, but in the end the child turns out to be a Van Helsing-esque monster hunter. The early story had several versions, jumping between the idea that the werewolf was actually just an over-sized dog that wanted to play, to the scenario where the child was eaten after the werewolf survived all the traps the child placed for it. At one point, while thinking of environments and setting, the child was a young boy out on his first hunt in a wintry Russian forest during the 1800s, carrying around a flintlock rifle. His job was to hunt the beast that had been terrorizing the local sheep.

My of this ideas did not really go anywhere; the story I found myself coming up with where often times too long or I knew the audience would get lost during the animation due to the story being to complex and having too many sections. I went back to the first concept I had; the monster and its interactions with the child, from there I gained some influence from watching animated television series such as the Looney Toons and Tom and Jerry, and films like Brother Bear where a huge inspiration for another idea.

Nearing the start of college I had two ideas outlined; the first was the dark comedy involving the werewolf and zombie to fought over who got to eat the baby, while the second one was more emotional that involved a creature that befriended a child beforehand and the animation would be set around it trying to get the child back to her village at the top of a cliff.

(Early background test with character in foreground)

In the end I stuck with the Monsters against the baby idea as it was what I wanted to do from the start and the idea offered more opportunities to animate something funny and test my skills. The the creature determined to aid the child was set to be similar to my last animation project, with complex backgrounds and ambitious shots.

Degree Presentation - Major Film

Degree Presentation - Major Film

During the first week of the course, we were asked to present our ideas for a short film this year to the lecturers with a short 5-minute presentation on the general idea. I had some materials already prepared for something like this during the summer; rough concepts and a general outline of the story. However it didn't really amount to much, so during the week we had to prepare, I digitally drew some character references in the style I was hoping to achieve and also a sample background where the colours had no outline.

Aftermath

Overall, I think the presentation went relatively well. I believe I managed to get the style I wanted to try and the the general theme of the short across okay, however I think I struggled to convey the actual story outline in a simple, clear way that was easy to understand. Though the slide show was there to help me, I found that I struggled even with it. However, the animation idea itself was not met with heavy doubts, so I took that was a potential likeness to the idea.