Principles of Character, Frankenstein Lives.

September 2024 to January 2025.

For links to all content, see bottom of page.

Example- (Week) – Summary of what was done/what will be done in that week later for Frankenstein lives. Then a more detailed explanation of what happened, what went well/what didn’t. My thoughts on the project.

Other things done that week, classes and toolkits etc.

Thoughts in general. (also may include funny or memorable things that happened around the time if I feel like it. You are welcome.)

First week and project brief, September 2024

Choice between Frankenstein Lives and NHS brief.

Tool kit, chose the Blender one. Never really used blender before but it went better than expected. Managed to make a little wonky house and a lantern. Blender is pretty fun.

2nd week- discussing ideas and forming groups

Made a team of 3 with Alfie and Thomas, chose to do the Frankenstein Lives Brief because it sounded more fun. We discussed the potential message, tone and target audiences. We agree that the tone should be dark and we want to theme the film around the feeling of burn-out. We also agree that there should be two characters, with one growing from and eventually consuming the other. I like this idea, it could be expanded? Maybe the second character has some time to grow on screen, or tear pieces physically from the first creature to build its self?

I drew some ideas for character design, I think it would be cool if the creature had long, flowy hair so it could have some nice secondary action. And also maybe horns? Or antlers?

(Image from my sketchbook, some of my ideas for early designs for the creature.)

3rd week- Making Log lines and Synopsis!

We want to use an experimental approach with the background design having a glitchy effect where the character will use pieces of itself, which it will tear out, to create its environment. The tone will be dark with some body horror elements (which I’m exited about!) and will repeat (e.g. the final scene will link back to the beginning scene implying the cycle begins again) to link to the theme of burn-out for creatives we discussed last week.

Log line; “An eldritch creature, isolated in the void, destroys itself in attempts to create purpose.”

Also we briefly discussed what roles everyone will take, Alfie wants to do backgrounds and comp, Thomas wants to do animatics and some other pipeline stuff and I want to do character and pre-production stuff like character design. And obviously we will all contribute in discussions and animation.

4th week- Making concept art, starting storyboards and made some experimental character designs.

We discussed storyboarding the film working off our ideas from the beat sheets we did last week in class. We all made storyboards for the film individually then discussed what shots/ideas we liked most. Our main idea was making sure that the story could be repeated, with the final shot fading out to mirror the very first one implying that the cycle would begin again.

(Below, some of our early sketches for the characters design compiled together, with contributions from all members of the team on what we thought the character should look like. And a thumbnail sketch of storyboard ideas from my sketchbook, mainly just for possible camera angles and story beats.)

Interim presentation one- Criticism and areas to improve: Make the creature less humanoid looking and more eldritch, which we did by reducing the features of the creature to just one eye and removing the long hair.

switched toolkits from learning Blendr to movement in 2D animation. Learning Blendr was fun, but I still don’t really understand the controls. Mario’s workshop was fun, we made little animated tests of a character reaching I high shelf, and I (like an fool) forgot entirely to save mine. maybe if it get time I will re-make it.

Halloween! We just chilled in the cafeteria after class in our costumes, I was dressed as JD, my favourite character from Heathers the Musical! Was really nice.

5th week- storyboards and character designs continued. remaking them a little bit

We edited our Storyboards down so they would flow nicely together. We also discussed character design more, we had decided that the creature should have antlers and a drippy, gory body and maybe multiple arms. We also discussed if the creature should regenerate its self when it tears away parts of its body. If it did not regenerate, that would fit our theme of creative burn out eventually leading to self destruction but may be difficult do do in terms of story telling; e.g. how would it rip its arms off if it did not have any arms? On the other hand if it does regenerate, it could make our theme slightly less relevant? Either way I made a small experiment of what it could look like regenerating.

(Above, images from my sketchbook showing further exploration of character design ideas, antlers, maybe having multiple arms and the drippy, gooeyness of the creature when it moves. Below our finalised storyboard.)

Also this week I think we started making the walk cycle, it was around this time. We looked at how to construct one in order, following up, down, passing etc. and I chose to make one of my OC’s, Lex.

6th week / 9thth week- animatic

The story board was just a bit too long, so we had to edit it so it would fit nicely within our 40-60 seconds, we were aiming for about 50-60. some scenes we had to edit down from our first story board passes, like shortening the scene with the two creatures so we could have more time for the first and last scenes and the gore scenes in the middle. I’m very exited about the gore scenes, I like body horror and gore and all that stuff. Talked about sound design, gory and gloopy for when the creature moves and especially during the body horror scenes.

We also decided to take a more liberal approach with our animation pipeline and production schedule. I think that it would be pretty cool to consider taking an experimental approach. For example if we let process lean into how we work it could give the film a very unique feel. We still want to focus on character, since that is the whole point of this brief, but if we allow process to shape part of how we work going forward it could give our film a really cool feel.

9th to 10th week-

Continued to work on the story and nailing down our character design. We briefly discussed what we would do when we broke up for Christmas so that we would be ready. Forgot to make a note for these two weeks, oops.

11th week-

Before we split up we discussed which scenes each of us wanted to animate. I’m doing the body horror scenes where the creature rips off parts of its self, its head, both its arms, part of its stomach area, and it grows and tears off an antler. I’m quite exited to do these scenes, I think (I hope) it will be fun. 🙂 We also briefly discussed about timeline, we want the roughs to be done by around new years.

After class, Went to the Christmas party on Friday in the Darkroom Bar. It was really fun, we did Karaoke together!

Interim 2 Presentation- criticism and areas to improve: reduce the amount of time the two creatures spend looking at each other to have more time to focus on other shots. Make it super clear during the final shot that the story is implied to repeat by duplicating the final shots and putting them at the beginning. Both of these things we did.

Christmas break, (3 weeks from December 13th to January 13th)- Roughs and Keyframes

Christmas break, I’ve got a tablet I borrowed from the kit room. Making the rough key frames for my set of scenes. Using two’s to get the shots quick and gory to match the pacing we discussed. Going to continue. (Currently watching “Falsettos” while working)

New years, Roughs done for Keyframes.

12th to 13th week- Animation

Not much to be said, Worked on Animating my scenes in Toon-Boom, cleaning up and editing some of the shots. Changed some of the timings from the roughs to make them smoother and to increase the body horror effect.

Final Interim Presentation- Criticism and areas to improve: Make sure the transition between shots is smooth, Which we did by adding a boil overlay over the middle shots to tie them to the beginning and end. Have a completed comp test made and applied earlier in the project, which we will aim to have for the next project. And make sure to have the line’s colour and colour cards be the same for continuity, which we were going to do anyway.

Continued animating my shots, very nearly done. Cleaning up, closing gaps and colouring. etc. Almost done.