When I began the animation project I was reading a book called Burton On Burton, Edited by Mark Salisbury. It is a collection of interviews with the director Tim Burton about every film he has done in his career as an animator and movie director. One film that struck me as sounding quite quite fascinating was a little animation he did called Vincent. Burton had originally written the story to be a childrens book but then he got the oportunity to make a stop motion film. "I wanted to do that kind of animation because i felt there was a gravity to those three dimensional figures that was more real for that story. That was realy important for me , I wanted it to feel more real" This is something i took on board and is part of the reason i made a stop motion film too with 3d chracters.
Burtons story is about a boy called Vincent Malloy who fantiscises he is Vincent Price. Burton is heavily inspired by the Vincent Price/Edgar Allen Poe films. They had quite an effect on him as a child. I was originally going to make my animation in black and white like the Vincent movie is as i felt my tale was quite a dark story. I found it was strange that a small girl could become 18 by wearing a fur coat. I began to think what dark magical powers she may have had that enabled her to do this. Was she a normal girl or was there something witch like about her? Could she cast spells on people? I also thought what dark secrets the coat could have. Where did it come from? Was it possessed? After all this I decided to keep the story simple and not go off on too much of a tangent. I decided to keep the colour to a minimal as it was a cute little story about a little girl and I didn't want the sets to be too fancy. Most of the sets are in black and white, the most colour is in my characters shoes.
I did take a few tips from the Vincent animation, for instance the use of an animal to go from one scene to the other. A section of the film I really liked was when Vincent was walking up the dark stairs to his room. I tried to recreate a similar theme in my animation as my character walks up the stairs to a scary world of her sisters bedroom.
Before i had even seen the animation of Vincent I had seen pictures and had read all about it. I really liked the sound of it and it inspired me to think of all sorts of scenes and chracters.
It wasn't just Vincent that inspired me. Some of the drawings in the book that Tim Burton had done were so good I just had to try and base my character on some of them. In the end my chracter developed and did not look like a Tim Burton character but this was certainly the starting point for the main chracter Flossie Teacake. I also looked at some Quentin Blake illustrations as i found my pictures were beginning to look like his drawings. I then noticed that there is quite a simalarity with some Quentin Blake pictures and Tim Burton. Their characters tend to be tall and lanky, an idea i liked.
I studied a few story boards that Tim Burton had created for his films and this led me to see how I could get my story accross by using story boards.
I then began to look at other story boards and I also refered to some comics to see how the story could be put accross with still images. I looked at the book "The Fundamentals of Animation" by Paul Wells and the story boards and pictures created by people that were in that book. I saw how it was a good idea to document everything and have a plan as to how to make sets or what was to happen next in the animation. This made my life a lot easier when shooting the animation as I didn't have to waste time coming up with new bits for the animation as I went along. All the timing and lighting and angle of the shots had already been worked out.
Some other animataions I also looked at for technical ideas and story lines included Fermant by Tim Macmillan. I liked the way this had been shot, it was like the camera moved so fast that the images just didn't have time. I do not know how this was made but perhaps I will find out and one day try a similar technique. The film is shot in a city and follows peoples lives as it goes along. It winds through streets, parks, and through peoples homes. It was more the technique I was fascinated with with this film, it was so intriguing to watch!
Another animation I really liked was The Littlest Robo by Richard Kenworthy. I really liked the technique again here. It is a much different style and technique from Ferment or any of Burtons films. This animation uses flat colour and it is drawn rather than 3d. As I was looking at film it was more the techniques I was looking at as I was more researching the best way to shoot my animation.
I was looking at different animations and realised sound effects were a good tool as was some comedy in the story. It can really draw people in and allow the audience to interact with the piece. The charcaters didn't have to be human form, or animals, they could be shapes that move and have little chracters of their own. I also noticed colours can represent a lot, good or bad, happy or sad.
I took all these things into account when designing my characters and drew inspiration from all my research.
