The Man

He's the man

I promised you the man, and here he is;

You may notice the similarites between him and the author, Poe;

I think that his face is so tragic and sad looking, it will capture the look and feel that I hope to bring in my film.
I put my character in a dressing gown, so he will be lazily reading a book at midnight. The character is rigged and assembled completely, so I can move his head and arms, and they will move realistically to that of a human skeleton.
I have made a total of 6 views;
Front,
Back,
Front Side Right,
Front Side Left,
Back Side Right,
Back Side Left.

I may change small things, such as add more detail and such, but im trying to follow the user guide for Animate, which isn't the most easy of tools. Ah well.

Paintings Part 2

Here's two more paintings, I've done quite a few now, I wont put them all up, but the main character, the man, will be up and running shortly! :]

Paintings

I've decided to paint each of the props for my film, things include; Fireplace, Table, Chair etc.
Then i'll worry about the backgrounds and the characters later on!
As good ol' Blue Peter would say: Here's one I made earlier;

After I play around with them in Photoshop; cut them out, fix all the errors and add colour and shadow. They will be ready to use within my animation.

Animatic

This is the finished animatic, using the rough storyboards I drew and using a recording of the Raven I found by James Earl Jones;


I can bring an edited version of the poem to life! Almost!
The main character is all over the place in terms of asthetically. I cant decide on how realistic to make him, what style or design. Hopefully settled soon!

The Raven

Well, i've been working on my final animation piece for my last year at university (sob), before i'm kicked into the real world, which is an adapatation of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven'.
Its something i've wanted to do ever since I was little and saw The Simpsons first Treehouse of Horror, which had their own version of it. Although I didn't understand it, I knew there was some powerful meaning behind its simple premise. And after my dad read me the poem and helped me to understand, i've been an avid fan of Poe ever since.

Well, 10 or so years on, and i'm finally making my own version. I'm not aware of any definate animated version of the poem, other than The Simpsons, so hopefully if I do a good job, people may call this one 'The' animated version.

I have no idea what the finished thing will look like, I really want a crazy abstract look. But im not artistic enough for that, I like to play around with camera angles and use clever animation techniques, but nothing 'arty'. Although I wish I could.
Anyway I'll have some drawings of my character soon......ish.

I'll leave you with a drawing from the french artist 'Gustave Dore' from his work on The Raven.

The Tell-Tale Heart

A very influential short animation, based on the tale by Edgar Allan Poe, narration by James Mason.

Heard of this a while back, then found it was included on the Hellboy DVD as Del Toro is a huge fan! Have got the dvd, have seen the short many times, not watched Hellboy yet though :/