Project Brief and Research

Create one of the following responding creatively to a piece of research that you expect to be significant in your extended essay.

Set of at least 6 gifs

A sequence of illustrations

Design/illustrations for a game

A sequence of documentary photography

Kinetic typography (1-3 mins)

A set of three animated digital posters

A design campaign

An animated story (1-3 mins)

OR

Propose your own response (subject to tutor approval) to the title and content of your extended essay.

In each instance you must write your own brief. It can take the form of one large or several small projects.

Crucially, whichever you choose, it must be a creative response to the research you are completing for your essay. Your outcome should display your advanced visual communication skills through a practical screen-based outcome in an interesting and experimental way that develops your personal visual voice. It must be presented to a high professional standard.

Hedgehog in the Fog (Yuri Norshteyn)

This is one of the most atmospheric animations I have seen, It's almost indescribable in a way. Its one of my motivating factors of wanting to do cutout animation as there is a lot of artistry even in the limitations of a 2d plain, it operates like a simple fairytale of a hedgehog wandering through a strange and mysterious landscape to meet up with his friend. I also enjoy how they take what is supposed to be a mundane meeting and turn it into a strange and almost perilous journey from the small characters perspective. That is a large facet of what I want to do for my short film, a mundane trip turned into a existential fight for survival.

Dario Argento's Suspiria. I watched this again recently, and what I enjoy the most is its implementation of colour to evoke a mood of horror, Reds, blues and yellows are beautiful but they also evoke the sense of otherworldly dread and mystery. The plot in itself also has that fairytale parallel of a youth stuck in an old an beautiful estate which is only a facade for a witches coven. Even down to killing the witch herself and escaping the academy in flames. I want to use different colour schemes for different scenes, not only to indicate changes in location but to enhance horrific elements I want to portray in my film. e.g. A red, bustling city transitions into a blue lonely alleyway.

Little Nightmares- Videogame.

This is one of my most favourite video games of all time, just for its art alone. The monsters in the game are not even your regular fairy tale monsters but gluttonous and cannibalistic humans out to exploit, punish and consume children who are the size of rodents compared to them. This is all communicated through the environments and the character design.

The really enjoyable thing about it is that its a rather unconventional setting, almost contemporary with its coal powered machines and elevators.

It also follows a loose narrative to show off several monsters you have to avoid, a janitor with long, spider like arms, inhuman chefs and geisha with the powers of a sorceress.

19th Century Children's Illustrations- Edward Lear and John Tenniel

I only wanted to reference these two in particular as they hold a similar appeal to little nightmares, strange looking characters with odd proportions. They are almost caricatures of real people, which is a facet I find connects to children and fairytales rather well. Fairytales are about exaggerations of good and evil, the young children are the only normal ones whilst everything looks strange and sometimes scary from their developing mindset.

Gregory Horror Show- Animated TV miniseries

This is another horror related property which uses both the odd array of characters and unique colour schemes in tandem. It's mostly done from a first person perspective and each season is focused on a lead character with deep psychological issues which they have to confront head on with the demented creatures roaming the hotel.

Paula Rego's Red Riding Hood Suite.

Nosferatu- German Expressionist Film Version of Dracula.

Ever since my short film What's the Time, I grew more of an interest in old film overlays and techniques. One such inspiration for my current project is the 1922 film Nosferatu, the first film adaption of Dracula and an early piece of German Expressionist Cinema. This is a much more exaggerated version of the classic character, he is more rat like with long front teeth, pointed ears, hunched shoulders and long spider like fingers. He is almost a textbook idea of what a bogeyman would look like. Most of what I am looking to achieve though is that old dirty, film look where its slightly jittery and there are specs of dots here and there.

Quentin Blake- Roald Dahl's Childrens Book Illustration

I have recently got into the more sketchy style of drawing and I think Quentin Blake is a fair influence on that. There is more a gritty, yet still child oriented look to the antagonists in the Roald Dahl books, which I quite enjoy. My goal is to make my style for the film a slight blend of the old line drawings of the past mixed with the more contemporary child-like style of his work. So I can get a good balance of the old, gritty and strange yet portrayed from the perspective of a child.