This has actually been a bit of a difficult process for me and I got off to a bit of a slow start. I started off with a lot of different ideas which included three web-series ideas, a couple of comedic short animations and some more short animations with more serious tones.
I really liked one of my web-series ideas in particular, but while it had an interesting world concept the characters needed a lot of work. My other web-series idea had interesting characters, but because it had such a huge cast and a slice of life feel it wasn't really what I wanted to create for this project.
After a lot of consideration I decided that I wouldn't have enough time to develop such large concepts, so I decided that I would create one of my short animation ideas. Because I wanted to do something a bit different I also decided I wanted to play with a different story type and style than I usually do. I thought it would be a nice challenge...well, I found the challenge without too much trouble.
Hunted was to be a short comedy about a creature that lives in the forest and the hunter that wants it's head for his trophy collection. And as usual with my animations, there was to be bit of twist at the end.
I had decided a few things early on. The animation would be set during the day in the forest but would have a scene in the hunters cabin and another in the creatures den. The creature would not be a bird or something that we would find in our forests but may be a mash-up of different animals. And lastly the animation style had to work with the mood of the story but also be visually appealing to me.
And that is where my problems began.
First I began to research other comedy based animations that had used a similar storyline and relationship between two characters. This appeared a lot in animated classics.
Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote
Tom and Jerry
Itchy and Scratchy (The Simpsons)
Herman & Katnip
All of these animations had slapstick elements, but also use very simple backgrounds and 2D animation. For my project I wanted to explore a different, more modern style than used in these animations. I planned to use Maya to create a 3D animation in a style that could support this type of story and comedy. I wanted to find a way to make my world and characters more detailed these, but still able to perform silly actions without seeming like the animation was trying too hard to be something it wasn't.
I began to search for images of forests for inspiration. I wanted something that was a little mystical but that wouldn't seem too at odds with the story. There was a huge variety of different styles so I looked at everything from the realistic forests of Sleeping Beauty (1959), digitally altered photos with interesting colours, to very stylised; cartoony trees.
I found that the forests I found most interesting were probably not really suited to this story type. I love the images of the the light shining through the trees, but didn't think they would work well with my story. I tried to put aside these preferences and create a more stylised forest. However I hit an artistic slump. Every time I thought I knew exactly what I wanted the forest to look like I lacked the skill to alter my drawing style to match. I tried to experiment with some different styles of trees, and the ones I likes best were these twisty ones.
I decided to move on and explore the look for the Hunters Cabin, where this story begins. I created the following mood board.
My concern at this point was that I was obviously being drawn to imagery that was very detailed, and I wasn't sure how well this would work with my story style. I thought the my compromise would probably be to use more detailed backgrounds with simple characters. So before I went any further with the world I wanted to work out what my characters would look like.
I choose a few silhouettes to develop. Then I decided that even though I hadn't finalised a design I wanted to test out some different colours and styles for the characters. I tried a solid fill with an outline of a darker shade on one, but I really didn't like it. What I did like though, was the more textured style of the purple and orange variations. This really didn't work with my idea of more simple characters, so I tried again with a rough colour of one of the hunter silhouettes.
At this point it became clear to me that the style wasn't going to simply fall into place. I couldn't achieve the style I saw in my head. And if I couldn't get the style down, I obviously didn't have a very clear vision of how I wanted this to look. It was better to drop the idea now, and move onto a different concept.
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