Initial Designs - Character & Environment

        Having come up with a number of basic ideas and concepts, Fiona and I decided to divide the design workload, with me taking the characters and her handling to initial environmental designs. I really enjoyed being able to spend an afternoon sketching out ideas, as after the Character & Narrative module's emphasis on Maya, it seems like an age since I have done any drawing, inking and painting.

        

        These three are just my first attempts. I tried to focus on using disparate shapes for each character, to create easily identifiable silhouettes, as in other projects my characters have sometimes been too similar to one another. So I began with a core shape for each character: a pear, a rod and a square. Oddly, the butcher on the left eerily resembles The Boxtrolls' Mr Trout, although I was in no way referencing this character. I also had a strong inclination that their skin should be a sickly shade of green-grey, to correspond with the squeamish nature of their work, but also mirror the cold fluorescent light of many abattoirs.

        Fiona and I are only intending on having two butchers in our narrative (to keep our already ballooning workload down, as well as to not overcrowd a short film). After consulting with Fiona, we have decided on the tall & thin, and square characters. We felt that they were already developing personalities, and were the most distinct from one another. The stocky square butcher automatically comes across as the gruff, hardened, (perhaps bullying) authoritarian character, while his gangly colleague seems softer, more impressionable and less intimidating; he could easily be bossed around by 'the stocky sod' (as Fiona charmingly referred to him). 

        As I am also undertaking some of the prop modelling and set design, we have decided to each take on one butcher. Working from my initial designs, we will further develop and put our own stamp on one character, as we would both love to develop our modelling skills, and experience all facets of the stop motion process. I chose to work with the gangly chap (I'm thinking of naming him Gordon or Gilbert), and Fiona the stocky man.

        While I was focused on the characters, Fiona began to consider the set, sketching a rough layout and a floor plan for me to add props and details to. Although we have referenced images and videos of existing abattoirs, we also have to take in to account costs and timings; creating a vast, cavernous set is probably beyond us at this point. We have tried to be efficient with the set, focusing on the core areas of a slaughterhouse, such as the corrals, the area where the animals are slaughtered, and the hanging rails of carcasses. 

     
        We are hoping to build the walls of the set so that they are relatively lightweight and removable, allowing easy camera access to all areas, as well as to make transporting the set more viable.

        I am under express instructions from Fiona not to be too precious with my drawing at this point...which I will try my best to bear in mind.

        Stylistically, we are looking at a variety of dark and eerie stop motions, such as Cannis and Peter & The Wolf, which we feel reflect the tone and atmosphere which would best suit our topic.