Costume design 01

Roughing out a hospital porter costume.

With the ecclesiastical leaning of the environment and the story's need for authority figures, I've developed this from the style of a monk's habit and tabard.

The colour has been taken directly from Wright's Taliesin palette.

Character feeds environment feeds character

In lots of little ways, as I'm working through the proxy set design, I'm getting ideas to feed back into the characters which will inhabit it.

Characters first, developed to represent authority, freedom, sympathy, religion, oppression, incarceration. All in terms of the protagonist's state of mind, trying to develop characters that would reflect elements of his story (history).

The environment has grown out of the characters and now that's echoing back to those characters.

It is still a psychiatric hospital but it's developing an almost church-like theme so... where does that go?

Environment proxy modelling

A few things are striking me as I'm building this proxy environment.

• I'm modelling to scale but the appearance of scale also has to fit the needs of the story (that's in terms of impression rather than levels of detail, physical restraints or other technical considerations).
• You can zone an environment with geometry, lighting and colour.
• Trying to make a claustrophobic environment is (necessarily?) restricting... Experimentation in focal length is needed... possibly another element to zoning?

On we go...

Ohhh.. and Boolean operations are still a complete pig!

Effects_01

I've been thinking about how one of my characters might perceive the world and how that could be put across to an audience.

The character's reality is not consensual, and I was wondering how to put across a transition or hint that we're shifting between two views.

As a start I've looked at using a chromatic aberration effect by splitting the RGB channels and transforming them.


This is designed to be an animated effect, warping in and out as we move from one area to another, possibly between shots or even to represent the character blinking..

Environment Concept Approach

Another approach to concept work. I've tried a floor plan and basic proxy model for my hospital/asylum set.

There are a few things that set me on this route.

• I was getting frustrated with interior environment design.
• I watched a talk by Capy Games' Dan Cox (GDC 2015) https://youtu.be/WWXsmnlmADc
• That lead me to Rengel's Shaping Interior Space (buy it used!! It's damn expensive otherwise) http://amzn.eu/0lDu4Gu

I was also reading Mamet's Writing In Restaurants. As with some other great writers, he was able to present a revelation as something I already knew (but didn't know I knew). http://amzn.eu/6JRwJkv

There is no use for realism other than being true to the story (and that's an incredibly loose paraphrasing...)

That leads you right down the rabbit hole.

Asylum Style-um

I'm investigating Mid Century Modern design with a style sheet of sorts. It's interesting to discover that Frank Lloyd Wright was of Welsh lineage. You can see an approximation of his Taliesin West colour palette (against 3 backgrounds) at the foot of the sheet.

Style Sheet - Mid Century Modern

Images combined from various sources

Frank Lloyd Wright - Taliesin Palette

http://www.steinerag.com/flw/Artifact%20Pages/Schumacher.htm

There are also some elements of the Roman & Williams designed Hotel Emma thrown in. They appear to have embraced the decaying, aged, weathered and worn elements of a the building to produce a stunning interior.

Roman & Williams - Hotel Emma, San Antonio (TX)

https://thespaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/3-Hotel-Emma-Cred-Scott-Martin1.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f5/fc/5c/f5fc5c8d3e35d73bb7c04d03926067e1.jpg

Taking some of these elements forward, I need to finalise a scheme for colour and surface pattern, choose specific architectural elements and props, produce specific sheets for each purpose and then, maybe, block out the environment.

It's a plan... it might change...

Early Moodboard

This is an early moodboard incorporating:

• early sketches
• sculpt concepts
• character and environment references
• early storyboard ideas
• pattern and colour

Along with a working outline, the juxtaposed, layered and partially transparent images proved to be a good jumping-off point for further development.

A revised moodboard is overdue. I'm thinking that a number of iterations as ideas move on could work.

It's all about figuring out the process.

The Story - Psychology 1.01

The idea for this story was developed from some mention of a theory. Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949), a Neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, proposed that psychiatric patients could, while still suffering psychoses, learn not to manifest their symptoms.

http://www.quotationof.com/images/harry-stack-sullivan-2.jpg

First to look at some definition of psychosis:

The two main symptoms of psychosis are:

• Hallucinations – where a person hears, sees and, in some cases, feels, smells or tastes things that aren't there
• Delusions – where a person has strong beliefs that aren't shared by others

The combination of hallucinations and delusional thinking can cause severe distress and a change in behaviour.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Psychosis/Pages/Introduction.aspx 

Looking more closely at Sullivan's theory (observations perhaps), I'll note these as quotes from various sources. I'm unable to find the references at the moment (damn my note-taking)

The subjects had:

• "Integrated enough of the personal environment to realise the prejudice opposed to their delusions" 
• "Grown wise enough to be tolerant of the imbecility surrounding them having finally discovered that it was stupidity and not malice"
• and could feel a noblesse oblige towards those around them, those others that could not understand their reality.

I'll get into some explanation (or how I understand it) and how I've tried to apply these theories/ obsevations in a later post.

Ancillary characters

With a story outline ruminating, I was starting to look at ancillary characters.

On top of the story progression (wait for it...) I started to realise that our protagonist's environment could reflect his circumstance, his state of mind, psychology, history, psychoses.

I'd also started to think in terms of authority figures. I already had an idea of:

• Parental authority - memories of maternal strength and paternal absence
• The doctor - the keeper, judge and gaolor, almost god-like in authority
• The hospital - with institutional rules, the law.

While I could attempt (and will try) to develop the hospital environment's authoritarian character in its own right, I also considered human characters that could act as agents of subjugation. Two contrasting approaches appealed to me. One cruel and one benign.

These are the hospital porters.

Look to the process (Part Four)

To the protagonist...

I'd gone through a process with The Doctor which I was able to repeat with our protagonist, "The Patient".

He was also cast from photographic reference of an actor, Greg Dourif. He was most obviously cast as Billy Bibbit in Milos Foreman's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

His physical attributes would display:

• Childlike proportions (youth and innocence)
• Large eyes (wide to the world)
• Large forehead (workings of his mind)
• Large ears (listening)
• A smaller mouth (difficulty in communication)

Look to the process (Part Three)

I'd taken the view that having a world of creative tools at my disposal, I should not be constrained to realism. What was the point in being able to create if I was to only re-create?

I couldn't step away into pure expressionism. I just needed to push characters. I wanted to warp them enough to accentuate their personality without losing an element of the believable.

Could the characters be caricatures without becoming cartoon? That was the next step.

I started casting characters, the first being "The Doctor". He was based on the actor Klaus Kinski.

Pushing his image in all directions, I was looking for a reflection of his role and character. He was to be a psychologist. He needed to be a talker and a thinker. He would have:

• a wide and full mouth (a talker)
• a large forehead (a thinker) and;
• intense eyes (to peer into your deepest thoughts). 

The chosen caricature was taken back to a reference photo for further development.

Look to the process (Part Two)

With some sketching time under my belt I started looking at characters that might suit my story ideas (more of that later).

My initial studies were almost straight from photographic reference. I was looking at an absent or late father and a strong but weary mother.

The father was based on the image of a homeless army veteran. He's kindly, well remembered but lost to us.

The mother figure was based on a photographic portrait by Dorothea Lange. Hers is the image of maternal strength in adversity.

This more detailed yet unfinished portrait led me to consider where I'd like to take my characters. Would my animated characters be constrained to realism or should I feel free to exaggerate, caricature, twist and warp their images to suit the story? 

Look to the process (Part One)

With two years in and four to go I'd had a small share of many aspects of the production process, sculpting, modelling, texturing, rigging and animation.
It's summer and I've taken stock. It was time to look at the basics again. The basics aren't basic. They're the foundation of everything. Perhaps I should refer to them as the base, basis, bases (bā'sēz')? Regardless, back to basics I went. I won't pretend this is in order.

1. Thinking about a story. Producing an outline.
2. Planning, research, planning, reference, planning.... planning while;
3. Learning to draw again. 
4. Thinking about story again, developing a history, writing a treatment.
5. Portraying character and environment according to story and history

I'll get back to 1. and 2. Learning to draw was a top priority (with the story still in the back of my mind). I'm learning to tell stories but they'll be visual stories.

Enough words. Here are some pictures.

   

I started with some portraits. I've never been good at likenesses. You may think I'm still no good. Not the world's best known faces but important to me nonetheless. They proved good practice towards further character development and forced me to improve observation and hand-eye skills.

Preamble to the process

I'm going to start this blog with some sketches and pre-production work but here's a preamble while I figure things out.

It's the August 2017 and I'm some way between my first and second year of a degree course in 3D Computer Animation but I'm already thinking about a final project.

It's a long way off.

I'm studying part time so my final submission will be in the summer of... I don't want to think about this too much... 2021

2021? Twenty Twenty One? That was the age of hoverboards, flying cars, cities on Mars, MegaCities on a cursed Earth, android servants, robot masters and alien overlords for me growing up.

Is it a long way off?

It is not. I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.