DE0996 Aaron Smith

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Evaluation

I have to say, this has been the most challenging brief of my university work. Some of it was my own doing, but the other part was just because of how difficult sections were.

At first, I found it incredibly hard to try and come up with an idea, because I’m so used to 3 act structures with films, tv shows, stories, etc. It was hard to make something a bit more ‘raw’, I suppose. Something that was more fuelled by emotion, feeling and atmosphere, rather than logic, characters and a storyline.

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RND Advanced Animatic (Incomplete)

Here is a more advanced version of the animatic. However, it is incomplete. I wanted to finish more but I didn’t have very good time management, so it is unfinished.

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Rough Animatic

Here is my rough animatic. It is not completely timed out the way I wanted it, but it is just to get an idea of the pacing of the animation and such. 

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Final Storyboard Part #2

Our story begins a similar way to the previous ideas, with the main character (Morgan) waking up after being smacked by the demon child. He quickly follows the being, only to realise the outside world has came to ruins, looking more like Hell than anything else. He debates on trusting the little demon, but decides to go with it anyway.

As he follows the demon child, they come across different obstacles, each mentally and emotionally scarring Morgan. Eventually, they reach this giant door, with Morgan immediately thinking it’s the exit, and becomes quite grateful to the devil kid. He opens the door, and is back in his own room. Just as he is about to sleep, he see’s something in the room, gasps, and it cuts to black. As the credits roll, we cut back to the devil child’s face in closeup, giving a creepy stare to the camera.

Also, side note: If you’re quite observational, you might’ve noticed the pills on his desk near his bed. I wanted to include these to show that this whole story could be up in his head, but that’s up for the viewer to decide.

[de0996aaronsmith]

Final Storyboard Part #1

Our story begins a similar way to the previous ideas, with the main character (Morgan) waking up after being smacked by the demon child. He quickly follows the being, only to realise the outside world has came to ruins, looking more like Hell than anything else. He debates on trusting the little demon, but decides to go with it anyway. 

As he follows the demon child, they come across different obstacles, each mentally and emotionally scarring Morgan. Eventually, they reach this giant door, with Morgan immediately thinking it’s the exit, and becomes quite grateful to the devil kid. He opens the door, and is back in his own room. Just as he is about to sleep, he see’s something in the room, gasps, and it cuts to black. As the credits roll, we cut back to the devil child’s face in closeup, giving a creepy stare to the camera.

Also, side note: If you’re quite observational, you might’ve noticed the pills on his desk near his bed. I wanted to include these to show that this whole story could be up in his head, but that’s up for the viewer to decide.

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New Idea #3

With my other ideas, they became very structured with their storytelling, even when I have tried to make it a bit nonlinear, it has always ended up with a three act structure. So, with this new idea, I hope to stick to a more nonlinear idea. More up to interpretation, and  with more atmosphere.

A Man wakes up from his sleep, to find a demon-child-thing sitting at his bed. It then smacks him out of bed. Morgan (the main character) watches as the other worldly being leaves his room, that there is something off about it. As Morgan follows this demon-child through this Hellish world, things don’t really make sense, as he runs across various moments that may be leading up to somewhere, or maybe not. Can he trust this demon-child? What does the demon-child have in store? And what will become of them?

Now I’ve already noticed that this story is a lot less specific than last time. And I think that’s a good thing. My previous stories, even if they started out as nonlinear, always came back to that. This story leads us to believe there can be a lot of vivid imagery and cool ideas.

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Concept Art: Demon Child

Originally when I did the storyboard, I used a placeholder design of this little demon child, having no intention to develop it further than the storyboard. However, I quickly found the design quite endearing, and was quite perfect for what I wanted. Obviously it did need some tweaking, but otherwise it had a solid base design.

I added two extra horns onto his head, because it seemed quite empty otherwise, and I added fur to him so he had more of a unique design, and fit more with the demon/devil theme. I wanted to make a constant thing that he lacks any facial expressions, and I think it works better that way for his character. We don;t know whether to trust him or not, judging by his creepy gaze and unemotional face.

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Concept Art: Morgan

The main character of this story, Morgan is supposed to be a character the audience can latch onto, as we go through the weird experiences in this tale. I tried to break out of my regular style, with a more Japanese influence from the artists I listed below.

I wanted to give the look that this guy was a bit sleep deprived, perhaps a bit depressed. I wanted him to look like he hadn’t been out of his house for a few weeks or so, which is ultimately why he is wearing a sweater and socks in the final design. I originally intended him to be a worker, perhaps in an office because of the smart designs I gave him. The reason for this, is because I originally intended him to be fired from his job and he has fell into a rut, which would explain why he’s wearing his shirt and/or tie still but in a messy fashion. But I found this to be quite constricting, as it didn’t really show much of his personality, and I couldn’t get a good colour balance with his design. 

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Style Inspiration #3: Nekojiru

Nekorijiru’s artwork really inspired me for this project. She takes these two cute cartoon animals, who you’d think would be in a Hello Kitty animation, and twists it on it’s head. Although I’m more inspired my the thin outlined version of her art style in the movie Cat Soup, I still have a great amount of respect for the original. I especially love the big black rises in the characters eyes.

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Style Inspiration #2: One

rnd pdf

For this project, I wanted a very loose anime/ manga Japanese style. And as I was researching all of these artists, one had came to mind: One. Technically, One is not a very great or professional artists, a lot of his work looks like scibbles, or the sketches you’d do before doing a final drawing. But that’s the part I found endearing to his style, he was so unprofessional but it was a style his own nontheless. As a guy who still struggles with drawing some stuff and just kind of “winging” it, One is an inspiration to many artists out there.

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Style Inspiration #1: Crayon Shin Chan

In the back of my mind, when trying to study loose anime styles, I began to remember a childhood anime called Shin Chan. Even though I was not that into anime as a child, aside from Pokemon of course, I remembered that I used to watch an anime called Crayon Shin Chan. A very weird, surreal, hilarious anime about the biggest brat in all anime. Based on the manga books by Yoshiko Tsui, I remember really enjoying the cartoony Japanese art style, compared to the more realistically art directed stuff at the time like Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z. I really enjoy how loose all of the linear is, with some adorable character designs and crayon-like colours.

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Feedback

So I got some feedback from my classmates on my new storyboard, and while the new story worked technically and it had some neat ideas, it was ultimately still had too linear of a story. To be fair, while I was doing the storyboard at the end, I began to notice how linear it had became, but by the time I noticed, I had already finished the storyboard.

So I think the next step for me is to keep the concept, but re-do the story. Make it less linear with less structure, more weirder imagery, and less of a 3 act structure.

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Storyboard V2 Part 2

Inspired by Japanese myths and legends, I decided to go forward with a monster following a character and basically messing up their entire lives. Things they enjoy, end up getting smashed and broken by the little thing. Even though the size of it might be very small, it has tremendous power, and something quite disturbing about it.

The story here, is this man is woken up by his persistent demon friend, who as it turns out, is not his friend. It is constantly smashing things upf or him, making his life a living hell. Even if it’s stuff he enjoys, he won’t enjoy it for long. Eventually, he manages to get a leash and collar to try and attempt to control the demon. It seems to be going well until he gets to the train stop, where the little demon ruins a potential nice conversation he could have had with a lot of people, more specifically an old woman.

After realising awful this demonic thing is making his life, the main character attempts to leave, only to be confronted by the proportionally inaccurate monster. It appears like it’s the end for our main character, until it turns out that it was a dream.

Or was it?

[de0996aaronsmith]

Storyboard V2 Part 1

Inspired by Japanese myths and legends, I decided to go forward with a monster following a character and basically messing up their entire lives. Things they enjoy, end up getting smashed and broken by the little thing. Even though the size of it might be very small, it has tremendous power, and something quite disturbing about it.

The story here, is this man is woken up by his persistent demon friend, who as it turns out, is not his friend. It is constantly smashing things upf or him, making his life a living hell. Even if it’s stuff he enjoys, he won’t enjoy it for long. Eventually, he manages to get a leash and collar to try and attempt to control the demon. It seems to be going well until he gets to the train stop, where the little demon ruins a potential nice conversation he could have had with a lot of people, more specifically an old woman.

After realising awful this demonic thing is making his life, the main character attempts to leave, only to be confronted by the proportionally inaccurate monster. It appears like it’s the end for our main character, until it turns out that it was a dream.

Or was it?

[de0996aaronsmith]

The Black Dog Ghost

The Black Dog Ghost is a demonic, ghostly entity found in the folklore of the British Isles. They are associated to be related to the devil or a hellhound, or even a ghost. It is supposed to represent death to many who see it, and has black fur, bright eyes, and much larger than your average dog.

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 Japanese Monsters/Legends/Myths

For inspiration for the monster character, I decided to look at Japanese monsters, legends and myths. I tried to pick monsters that were more based on animals, as I feel like it would give the monster I create a disconnect. If it’s human, I don’t think it would have as strong or original a design. I also noticed that some of them are spliced up animals combined together. Like the Wair Ushi Oni is a Spider and Buffalo, the Jinmenken is a splice of a dog’s body and a Human’s face/head, and the Kappa is a mix of a monkey, turtle and humanoid. Here are the names of the creature in order.

Wair Ushi Oni

Otoroshi

Futakuchi-onna

Jinmenken

Kappa

Nekomata

Baku

Yamasei

Waira

Nure-onna

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New Idea #2

Here is my second new idea. This idea is somewhat similar to the last one, except it has two key differences, and you will see what they are further down.

When I was thinking about depression and how it pulls people back, I began to characterise it as something that would follow a person around, and only that person could see it. More specifically, I was inspired by the Black Dog video I had posted down below. Originally, I also wanted to characterise depression as a black dog, not only because people are familiar with it, but also because there are tons of ghost stories and urban legends about black dogs. I think this idea is still a possibility, but I was also thinking of potentially having a monster representing depression. This could lead to a really creative design, whereas a dog could be thinking outside the box, because most people would not suspect a dog to have such an awful affect on a person. If this is the case, I need to decide later on if this animal or monster will be seen by other people, or just the main character.

I think this idea has the most potential and is probably the one I’m more excited about. I think this has great potential to be really interesting. There wouldn’t be a beginning middle or end either, so it’s not a typical story. I was considering adding a romantic element at the end, to give a satisfying ending, but I’m not really sure I’ll need it. It may just come off as cliched and hammy.