Drenton drawn up

More work has commenced on the town. Especially proud of the HSBC rip off in the lower corner, it took ages! 

These were all pretty easy; draw up the lines which take quite a while, work out the palette, fill the colours, then heartbreakingly delete all the lines you painstakingly made earlier. 

The town of Drenton-On-Sea

So i've started designing the town and its houses, basing it on the seaside town I grew up in. Going for a 1960's cratoon look, straight lines, off kilter shapes, all part of the childrens animation aesthetic I want it look like.  

WEEK 6IX

Attempting different expressions with his potential 60's-ish cartoon modern face. Looks beaky and quite creepy but a bit too clean that he looks snide when angry. Harder to feel sympathy for this face.

A return to Sila's old look but with cleaner distinct lines. More fitting to his dark appearance and strange manner. 

WEEK FIVE

Silas got some brand new rags! An outfit more in tone with undertaker rather than office worker. Currently drawing him with a much simpler appearance and a beak like nose. 

Faces

WEEK THREE

Starting to paint a backstory for the character, the successor to a line of Father&Son funeral homes, single, early 40's lives alone. Too big for everything in his house which previously belonged to his parents. 

WEEK TWO

Here are some scribbles, Ive been toying with his proportions, his face and the way he moves. My family have always had a saying (usually whipped out at weddings), to describe the dancing lankier members 'Swaying like a pissed giraffe'. The simile perfectly nails how I imagine him moving. 

A couple of faces and him posed against the rotating backdrop. I should stop drawing him with white pupils he looks a bit too much of a zombie and this is a character who as bad as he is shouldn't be disliked by the audience. 

Its annoying to scroll upwards it feels wrong. 

Concept 1

Now we're friends and all I thought I'd skip the introduction and start with a picture. This was based on where I live (which going by this picture is apparently in someones nightmare) a scratchy, inky version of a seaside town. It may be a bit too 'The Nightmare before christmas'. 

BUT I had a eureka moment. I liked the idea of where he lives contrasting with his look so it paints him as someone that doesn't fit in. I started to think about children's cartoons (not in a weird way Im an animation student so they're kind of always on the brain) and it set me on the path of designing the town to be this colourful, cutesy place as to juxtapose Silas and to frame the potential violence so it wasn't as shocking but more comedic like in the same way Tarantino's use of gratuitous amounts of blood make the death of his characters seem less emotive and less real. 

The idea is that the backdrops would be on a cycle as if it were some form of puppet show or a theatre set. 

The awkward first post

In the sleepy town I grew up in there was an Undertakers that never opened its curtains and was always adorned with an 'Out to Lunch' sign, being the age I was with the imagination that I possessed at age 10, a age in which I had an irrational fear of quicksand and rabies- 2 things I have still never come into contact with, my mind immediately painted images of death and not that perfectly understandable sort of death that undertakers are associated with but a 'Sweeny Todd' murder to pay the bills sort of deal. So 11 years later I'm making an animation about it because that just the sort of corrupted person I am. 

This blogs function is to document the journey of creation through the project, from that first enchanting touch of pencil lead to paper to those last frustrated sprawls, angrily beating down on a keyboard, dizzy from all the caffeine. What better place to start than the beginning WEEK ONE, DAY ONE. A drawing of a scrawny, Burton esque undertaker called Silas.

I wanted to create a character that was just very socially awkward, like a teenager unaware of his sudden growth spurt, all limbs and confusion, this gangly creation was to set the tone of everything else.