Tunnels Moodboard, Research and Initial Ideas

Above is my moodboard, at first glance looks a bit random but it covers lighting references, VFX, style variations, materials and most importantly, tunnels and cave structures. So here's what I'm thinking for each...

Tunnel Structure

The first question I asked myself was, "How did these fictional Tunnels get here?" I believe they would have existed before any human, immortal or god walked in the Everneath. The Everneath trilogy is based around the Hades and Persephone myth, so looking in my Greek Mythology book at world creation I found this. Gaia is Earth and Tartarus means the Underworld. I imagine the Everneath would have appeared the same time as these did since it is a world between Earth and Hell, I also imagine it's location would be reflected in the world's design by being a blend of the natural Earth, and preternatural underworld. The tunnels wouldn't be an exception to that, even if it is the deepest, darkest, unnatural part.

Here's a map from the second book Everbound, the tunnels I think run underneath the world's centre like the underground tube system in Central London.

Because of its nature and purpose, I think it would look like an ethereal hellscape - an unholy divinity. I looked at several different types of caves and tunnels and decided the best one to base this piece on would be a lava tunnel especially after researching how they are formed. The walls in the books are described as coal, coal also looks like lava rock and both are used for burning.

VFX

The tunnels is a place of power and energy, a place of transfer so I will use VFX - more specifically animated materials in unreal engine to achieve this. My initial thought was to imitate electricity using a colour to reflect human souls, at first I thought blue, white or green, maybe even a mix in a chromatic aberration kind of way. Then I came across a tutorial on creating a cosmic material with a limited colour palette in different variations. I felt brought me closer to what I wanted even though I didn't know exactly what that was yet. The material used caustics, stars and what I'm calling a main vein. When someone dies some say a new star appears in the sky, including this subtly felt right. Now I was getting somewhere, however energy surges - I needed to add a pulse to make it come alive. With what I have, it needs more detail in the vein, it needs to look like there was something being carried inside the vein.

A iridescent colour like a bubble would be a perfect colour representation of souls, but now I'm going off track because it's not so much souls that are being drained, the Everneath isn't interested in souls - that's for Hell and Heaven. It's concerned with emotional energy, so how could I convey negative emotional energy and with which colours? I still believe iridescent is what I'm looking for because of how it changes colour when viewed at different angles so I'm going to experiment with making a dark iridescent material. On a final note, I will need to all the VFX I do look look embedded in the wall, not projected onto it, the light is coming from inside the wall.

Lighting

Lighting is going to be a challenge because it's underground - there is no light source. The VFX is what I intend on being the main light source. I know I want some fog and some shadows to create an unnerving sense for my audience - but what would give off a shadow? Well, the Everneath have inhabitants called shades, they're a floating figureless mounds of oil. Their sole purpose is to serve and protect the Everneath, they have access to hidden places and can go through materials - Everlivings become shades when they miss a feed. The game Torchlight II gave me the idea to include this.

When is comes to warm and cool coloured lighting, I struggled to make a decision because cool reflects the eeriness and goes with a coal colour and theme of death. However, warm lighting goes with the theme of hellscape and lava. After doing some research both can be done! So this is my intention.

Style

Art direction is hard to pin point exactly right now but I know it's NOT going to be super realistic or super stylised either. I'm thinking somewhere between realistic and over-exaggerated stylised as defined by this article: Realistic vs. Stylized: Technique Overview (80.lv)

Another great article I found was: Building Underground Environments With UE4 (80.lv)

Character Design: Creating Story

Thinking about the story I'm going to tell, I have a nervous knight who uses his weapon in a last minute escape so I got to think what's the story behind the nervousness why are they nervous, what are they escaping from and how is the weapon used to do that?

My world is the Medieval England (aka Middle Ages) which with a Knight makes me think of England's Patron Saint, St George. The folk tale's popularity was at its peak during the late middle ages. It's about a village who had a dragon living in their lake in the forest that would poison their waters, the village gave everything to appease the dragon and make him leave: food, animals, money, children but it was not enough. The King himself even gave his own daughter to the dragon however our Patron Saint was riding through the forest and had seen the girl in danger - he fought the dragon and won.

In my story I have a nervous Knight fighting a

• Minotaur 

OR

• Giant snake that has all the sacrificed village children inside it 

who has wiped out a neighbouring village and it won't be long before it attacks the town, both are part of this Kingdom's empire.

He is nervous because as the King's son and eldest child, it is his duty to protect his Kingdom, the King is ill and weak (plague) - if the King goes he's dead for sure and the Prince wishes to go, the Queen must remain in the castle to take care of the King. Although the Prince has fairly well-trained Knighthood skills, he has never actually been on the battlefield and now he is about to venture into the unknown by himself.

Last minute escape - the Knight is struggling to defeat the beast and knows he cannot win so he has to make a choice die here and now or attempt a last minute escape with his life to where he can come back with the bravest/strongest soldiers and stand more of a chance. He chooses to save his life and escape.

To put the stakes up, it's no longer just his own life he has to save…

• He finds a young village child survivor hiding 

OR

• He has a sister (archer) who shows up last minute to help 

My Knight wields a spear and shield, when he sees his sister pierce an eye with her arrow, he uses his spear to completely blind the creature by throwing/lunging it into his other eye, allowing just enough time for a last minute escape saving him and his sister.

Collaboration: Robot Chicken

For example in the That's Bane clip (below) they've nitpicked that Batman talks a lot before he takes any action giving Bane plenty enough time to break Batman's back very dramatically multiple times - plus they've made a joke out of the Rule of Three concept which we are using in the Harry Potter skit - we return to it three times to exaggerate time.

This skit makes fun of Darth Vader's parenting skills - not exactly the best Dad going, holding his daughter prisoner and threatening her.

This skit they make fun of the possibilities the Terminator could create by changing the past altering the future.

Video on how Robot Chicken makes their animations

Collaboration: Research - Acting for Animators; Interviews with Ed Hooks

Listening to some interviews with Ed Hooks, I made some notes below each video of some key things.

• The difference between actors and animators is, animators don’t work in the present moment like actors do. 

• Actors are told to stay away from acting in the mirror because for them it’s like being on the stage and in the audience at the same time and it’s an impossible thing. Animators use mirrors and video references, but they are too aware, they’re aware of the scene and the movements and of themselves, Hooks reckons it would be better to see Animators use their friends more than themselves to act and reference. 

• He talks about how in Frozen there is fault in their storytelling and acting, there’s confusion over who the protagonist is, is it the character we follow throughout the story, who has no development (Anna) or is it Elsa, the Queen who has gone through character development by the end of the story and without her there’d be no plot. 

• Another fault is the villain in the story - Hans, throughout the story there is no foreshadowing that he’s the antagonist. When Elsa freezes the town his face doesn’t falter considering something totally unplanned has potentially sabotaged his plans; plus we don’t get the reveal until the third act close to the end. 

• Humans learn survival skills indirectly through story telling.

• The most important rule of acting is emotion tends to lead to action, the audience empathise with a character. They see what the character is doing and with empathy look underneath the action and identify with the emotion, that is how you get an audience to care. 

• The actor is the character on the screen, the animator is not the actor, an animator learns to see the world through the eyes of the character. The actor is the personality of the character. 

• Theatrical reality is for telling a story so you only show the parts of reality that are essential for informing an audience, you compress time and space and it has structure. You need conflict and obstacle where regular reality doesn’t have that all the time. 

• Acting is… behaving believably in pretend circumstances for a theatrical purpose. 

• Shakespeare said the actor should hold a mirror up against nature, you need to see nature and understand all the connections thinking, emotions and physical actions. An animator and actor needs to see more - why are people doing what they’re doing. 

• Everyone is the hero in their own life - even villains, we all star in our own movie and think about how are we presenting ourselves to the world. 

• Power centres are where we move from, you can move a power centre around, the higher the power centre the quicker the rhythm - anxiety is high power centre, tight and uncertain feeling like you’re going to fly away. Confidence is a low power centre - manifests in relaxed, centred, grounded, weight. This stops characters moving the same way. 

• The Iron Giant is a good example of good acting in animation, original toy story, Coraline and Up (first hour or it, mainly Carl and Ellie). That’s an example of how acting has nothing to do with words. 

• Up violates the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ principle, paradise valley where they meet Doug the talking dog via his magic collar, the audience is not ready for that as it was not set up in the first act. Same with Walle - you’re in space and not prepared for all the fat people.

Collaboration: Research - Acting for Animators; Comedy

Whilst reading acting for animators, I found a section on comedy that explains: what comedy is, why we find it funny, who professionals looked to. Here are some notes I made, I will post a PDF of the pages I read and found useful on Monday. It mentions a few times about Charlie Chaplin especially the Little Tramp so below the notes is Chaplin video.

Comedy

"... the animator should know wat creates laughter - why d things appeal to people as being funny?" (Disney, 1935)

If what you're doing is funny, you don't have to be funny doing it. (Charlie Chaplin).

There is only one way of making comedy richer - and paradoxically, funnier - and that is by making it more serious. (Walter Kerr; The Silent Clowns - 1975).

• Comedy is the celebration of life, thats’ the reason we will laugh more in a group of people than on our own. Laughter is our way of saying to one another, “I'm still alive. You still alive? Great! We are both still alive!” 
• Charlie Chaplin is the person to study if you want to understand how comedy works. 
• Comedy is directly related to drama, in fact comedy is dependent on drama, comedy is drama steroids. Drama has to do with the most potential, and comedy has to do with its limitations. Comedy is about limitations. 
• The ultimate limitation is life, everyone knows life is finite no exceptions, so when people laugh at jokes they acknowledge to each other they’re still alive. 
• Comedy is drama exaggerated, heightened and enriched. 
• The big challenge for actors and animators who want to be funny is this: in order to be funny, you must be truthful. If you try to be funny, I guarantee that you will not be funny. This is what is wrong with so many animated feature films that contain “gags”. 
• Comedy is not like hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree. It's the stuff of life, and it needs to merge organically from the situation in order to work. 
• We laugh at what we identify with. We are all - for better or for worse - caught up in this thing called life, and we have to do the best we can with it. When our best efforts to bellyflop, it is funny. 
• Animation is a better medium for comedy, you can get cars to crash harder, toss characters from great heights, even have them get shot through with a shot gun pellet - and still survive. 
• Farce - a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterisation and ludicrously improbable situations. (Slapstick). 
• Farce is about mechanics, mechanical things gone wrong, timing, and the element of surprise.

Collaboration: Research - Acting for Animators

Since we have our first acting class Monday I decided to start reading Acting for Animators by Ed Hooks (Third Edition) which talks about how we use acting in animations, here are some notes I made.

Seven Essential Acting Principles

1. Thinking tends to lead to conclusions and emotions tends to lead to action. (“The mind is the pilot” - Disney, 1935 - when it comes to characters) emotion feels like they exist independently from thought unless we make a conscious effort to analyse it. Emotions begin and ends with the thinking brain - “I think therefore I am” - René Descartes, 1637. 
2. We humans empathise only with emotion. Your job as a character animator is to create in the audience a sense of empathy with your character. 
3. Theatrical reality it's not the same as regular reality. 
4. Acting is doing; acting is also reacting. 
5. Your character should play action until something happens to make him play a different action. (Obstacle). 
6. Scenes begin in the middle not at the beginning. 
7. A scene is a negotiation. Negotiations you have to be able to win or lose, there are three types of conflict when it comes to negotiation: self, environment or situation. 

• Every scenes needs conflict, objective and obstacle for it to be theatrical. 
• Emotion - An automatic value response. Our emotions depend on how much we value something and the mental associations we hold. 
• Empathy - Feeling into. Empathy is we feel into the same thing as a character. Psychotic people cannot empathise which is what makes them psychopaths, they could kill a family at dinner then finish their dinner with no remorse because they cannot feel into anything. 
• Sympathise - Feeling for. Sympathy is we feel for our character, but we don’t want an audience to sympathise for our character for too long as they will emotionally disconnect with our character. Human nature is survival so when a character wallows too long in negatives and can’t get it together they pursue death over life and we are hardwired to respond negatively to that behaviour. 
• Anticipation is different for actors than it is animators. For animators it means to anticipate a movement like a baseball player throwing a ball. For actors it's an error to anticipate something before it actually happens, i.e. answering a phone before it rings.

Insight Perspectives and Suggestions

• Acting is more about what is underneath the words. When we have a thought, it is not the word that emerges first; it is head and eye movement, shoulder and neck movement. 
• The higher the power centre, the quicker the rhythm of the character. Anxiety is a high and heady power center. Confidence, on the other hand, manifest itself in a feeling of weight, a low power centre. 
• Goofy’s power centre was underneath his feet, pushing him straight up. When he walked it was as if he was on bedsprings because he was moving forward by the power center was pushing up. 
• Our sense of sight is a lot more powerful than our sense of hearing so what you show is going to count for more than what you tell it. 
• Do not put a gesture and with every word. The impulse to communicate comes from within and just gestures are a primary a form of expression as words are. Think of them as a form of truth telling for a character. Get inside and connect with his feelings and let that be the motivation for gesture. 
• Psychological gestures are gesture we do that we don’t realise we do like fiddling with a ring or bring a hand to the mouth a lot whilst talking etc. 
• Humans often contradictory messages. It is normal but unconscious behaviour for the words to say one thing and our body to say another.

Collaboration: David Attenborough Skit Influence Idea

For one of our +7 more films to make deleted scenes and outtakes of, we've chose David Attenborough narrated documentaries. Because we'd have to dress Moom up to look like an animal like in the documentaries we though't it'd be funny for the intentional idea to be Attenborough to narrate people dressed like animals. Below is a good example of what we're going for but a lot shorter.

Collaboration: Titanic Character Research Sheets

From Polly's research on comedy, we know comedy is a sense of "false violation" and because the film is based on a true, tragic story, we do not want to violate (even falsely) any of the characters that really did die. James Cameron (director) created Jack, Rose, Cal, Lovejoy and Ruth for the purpose of his film they were not real people even though there may have been people on the ship that may share the same name; so out of respect we are only going to mock the fictional characters. The American actress who plays old Rose, (Gloria Stuart born 1910) was not a passenger on the Titanic and would have been 4 years old the year the Titanic sank, not the age Rose is portrayed to be by Kate Winslet.

Reading Tom Bancroft's book 'Creating Characters with Personality' says that when you design a character you need to know them in your mind and your design needs to reflect the personality traits so below I have made two character research sheets. We know what sort of art direction we want and we are going to start translating live action characters into animation to fit our art direction.

Collaboration: Ideas and Research - Harry potter, James Bond and Titanic