2/4

From this point on I gonna post daily and report about my progress for this project. Problems I experience and (hopefully) the solutions as well as personal comments.

Animated Clips

Here are the some animated tryouts in playblast.

Lighting

The light has an important part in all the shot. It conveys emotion and atmosphere without would it be flat and lifeless. Another point is that we wont actually see what she is afraid of, execpt disstorted shadows. The shadows serve as an impersonation of her fears. The rest is up to the audience. Here are some examples of what we are looking.

Here is a good link I found

Light in Maya

Storyboard

These are our storyboad drafts. I will go trough each shot and explain how I try to animate the character. A finalized version of the storyboard can also be found on the group blog.

The Character

Since we dont have time to model and rig our own character, we use a pre-set character downloaded from Highend3D. The AndyRigs are good and easy to use and... stretchable as well. If you change the UV Textures a bit and put them in a pose, they can look quiet nice.

Storyline

A young women returns to her abandoned family home. She wants to recover a picture of her murdered family but as soon as she enters the house her mind plays tricks with her and she experiences a nervous breakdown.

So far so good, sounds nice and the team likes it. Now, how can we pull this off? I think to create an atmosphere and a feeling of angst, strong shadows and low key light will do the trick. Some creepy camrea pans and a few whispers would help as well. It wont be easy to do this but we hope that our little film is gonna satisfy the audience.

There is a great german nouvelist from the 18th century who I can only recommend. He actually use his nouvells as a Camera Obscura, it tells you a real story but upside down.
Can we trust our eyes and what we believe is reality?
Are we able to escape or change our "reality"?

A masterpiece from the "Black Romantic" period. It is a bit chewy sometimes but it´s worth it.

• The Sandmann -Wikipedia
• E.T.A Hoffman "The Sandmann" -English Tranlation
  

Appearance and Concepts

Lets start with the overall appearance of the building,
the house should be 70's - 80's commercial style building, maybe an old glassworking factory or something similar with red bricks and steel bar windows. References can be found in Moes ,Kirstys, Rahul and Alis´ blog.
I am modeling the living room so here are some concept sketches. It helped me to get an Idea of atmosphere for our film.

References for living room

Dennis Severes House

We went to Dennis Severes House in Folgate St. in accordance to our 3D Environment Project. It is basically a house with an "untouched" interior form the 19 century. From cellar to attic full of old stuff. It should give visitors an impression of what live was like in this period. The "kurator" or guide invites you with these words : " You are now about to step into another century and .... no photographs, please"
I spent most of the time in the "fuel" room, were the coal was stored and sketched the cellar window. Facinating how bright the light coming trough the window actually was, but how dark the room still was.
What I recognized is how carefully people walked trough the environment. Looking around every corner before going further. Maybe expecting the house owner (risen from the dead) screaming "What the hell are you doing in my bedroom"
Just totally different then people leaping up the stairs in a Tube station.

Pre-Pre_Production

Our Idea was to create either an urban environment or a living organic structure since we coudnt decide on one , we split the group.
We have tried to combine the two Ideas but it didnt work out, they were just vastly different.