Character: Monster

Here are some early designs for the monster character in my story. These images do not reflect the aesthetic I would like for my final film, but are focused more on form. They have too much detail at the moment but optimising the final designs for animation with the excess information in hand should ensure for a more thought-out character even after being simplified.

In the story the monster is created or rather grows out of the tears of the protagonist. She (the protagonist) is crying over the death of her father. The monster itself therefore is the manifestation of the pain and grief she feels over the loss of her dad. Because of this I thought it would be appropriate to have the monster character built out of the things that killed her father, in this case it would be built out bits of aircraft.

The huge wings are the most important part of the design for me and will probably be present in the final drawing- along with the monster's enormous size, you can see the comparison in the top image. I wanted to have other aircraft elements decide the form of the monster, but I think it will be easier if I decide the shape of this character beforehand and then assign various bits of machinery to the design to make it work. In the image below I drew the shape of the head before fitting the aircraft elements in. I really like the idea of the turbine mouth, so when the monster roars it roars literally with the ferocity of a jet engine.

Originally, I just wanted to animate a robot, but now the monster has taken on a deeper meaning and plays a much more important role in the story. I don’t think any of the theory behind the monster’s design will be so evident during the film’s showing but it will certainly help to develop these early sketches into a much more appropriate antagonist.



I am worried that the monster in the sketches above looks too human to be considered scary so I will be looking into animal forms to help rectify this issue. I’ll be checking out the Solid Drawing blog by John K for some useful tips on character design as well (thanks Rob!). The link is under 'technical links' on the right if anyone else is interested.

Aesthetics

I have some animation concept art by Koji Morimoto that I feel has a very interesting aesthetic to it. This image in Koji Morimoto's '0range' scrapbook was particularly inspiring.

The flowing line art, with its large curved strokes give the scene a really powerful atmosphere. The intensity of the line art is as important as the colour. The bold black lines give the scene a dark, brooding atmosphere and also capture movement which is why the image is so lively. It’s clear that it’s windy in the scene and the line art here gives that wind real power. The man in the bottom right almost looks like he is sailing on the grassy hills. I really admire the setting of this piece- it’s pretty much exactly what I wanted for parts of my story.

The enormous airship-like structure is more detailed when it comes to lines. The shorter layered strokes really add to the complexity of the structure but I’m not sure I would use the crosshatching method as much as it’s used here to shade objects. However, when I think of my monster character under this aesthetic I can see that the intricacy of the line art would suit the monster well as well as add to its darker nature as the antagonist. There aren’t many colours used here and the colours that are present are contrasting but obscured by the heavy line art- I think a similar approach to my film would be beneficial because it creates the right atmosphere but it may be hard to achieve in such a short space of time.

I’ve added a couple more images by Koji Morimoto that have a similar aesthetic to the one above, the liveliness in these images comes more from shape and form as there is no colour. I wasn’t really interested in creating an animation without colour or in monotone before but after seeing these images I feel much more confident about it as a possible art direction for my film.

The shape and form of the image below is well suited to the God character in my story, i had imagined that he would be formed out of large intricate, ever-changing flowing lines just like the ones here.

Influences

When I came up for the concept of this film I really tried to avoid any kind of influence. My aim was to come up with something completely original (even though that’s impossible) in terms of design but now that the storyboard and animatic are in process the influences have begun to show.

My influences for my film appear to be centred on anything epic. Through the whole process of developing the concept of the story, the presence of flight has remained constant. I really enjoy flight, whether it is flying machines or flying superheroes, spaceships or rockets- anything that flies in the sky or in space is awesome.

I can really appreciate flight in ‘anime’. Gundam, Macross and Eureka 7 are some good examples of anime that I have seen recently that make good use of flight with machinery or mecha. Some critics don’t rate Japanese anime highly, but I find that the cinematography used with flight in anime is epic and I’m pretty sure this has formed a lot of my motivation for pursuing a flight orientated third year film. On a side note I want to make clear that although I appreciate anime’s visual aesthetic, I have no intention of replicating it, only the shot and direction.

On top of that is the flight of able bodies like Kung-Fu heroes and Marvel superheroes. Wire-action in Kung-fu movies for me is epic. It might be an exaggeration of a martial arts form but the form and posture held by these heroes as they defy-gravity begs to be marvelled at, at least to me anyway. I know that it’s mainly for this reason that my main character does not fly in a plane or a spaceship. I want to show off the human body in the same way that Kung-Fu superheroes do.

The other thing I wanted to utilize in this animation was speed. The film will be epic if it’s happening at speed. My favourite thing in a film is a chase sequence and the faster they are, the more exciting they are. I like the car chase in Ronin, but as a combination of cool machinery, flight and ridiculous speeds- it’s all about Pod Racing.




There is a chase in my story and I think that this is the best way of making full use of speed as a tool for generating excitement and making the overall film epic. So that’s my influences and intentions simplified. Generally if it can be described with the words ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ and is remotely sci-fi, then it’s in there somewhere.