Developing my character

A man that used to work in marketing and data mining until he saw too far into the web of surveillance and information it scared him rotten. He becomes a recluse and cuts himself off from society. He becomes self sufficient, grows his own vegetables, keeps his own chickens. He recluses further into his own narrow alley of madness and neglects his his vegetable patch. He no longer cleans or feed his chickens to the state of rotting to death in their own faeces. He is a voyeur of technology, as he no longer interacts with it but observes how the outer world is trying to communicate to him.

After bouncing these ideas around with Zac, he wrote up a few passages to this story.

The data collector
Previously a man of marketing, he used to sell lies for a living, until he realised his life was merely exiting, he reclused away from an exaggerated reality and got lost in the narrow alley of his own mentality.
His vegetable patch hasn’t been tended to for weeks. The chickens will soon stop their clucking. Do you like the smell of rotten eggs when you sleep? Do you sleep?

The merchant of fear
For a long time he gathered a lot of information, but hard-drives of secrets aren’t easy to keep. The sins of the world seered deep into his conscious. A scared data skeleton remains.

Narrative

My animation will come into a story, where something big has happened. Something has made him become a recluse and paranoid.
The animation is set in my characters house, where he has locked himself away from society.
Conceptions and incidents of this character are told through other peoples view. My method to do this, is people will leave phone messages that start to piece together his story. Eg. “no ones seen you at work for weeks now, and people are becoming very worried.” People giving accounts of him.
I also intend to use radio broadcasts that talk about either his story or subjects that relate to him.
Images will show objects and memorabilia that reveal clues to this characters identity and past.

Ideas - Look + Feel

- obscure looking – but just enough to tell what objects are.
- I want the visuals to potray my characters state of mind. The use of colours, speed of editing.
- A lot of darkness and shadows – blurry and jerky outlines.
- Don’t want to show my character clearly as I feel the images will provoke imagination for the viewer to envisage him. Plus, I feel his lack of appearance is more fitting for the character im building.
- Currently considering creating visuals to work with by either
: taking photos and editing in photoshop = still frame.
: hand drawings scanned and edited in photoshop.
: using models like the Quay brothers.

Tom waites - Whats he building in there?

This music video by Tom Waites is a massive inspiration to the direction I want to take my project. Recommended by Collin, thank you Collin!
Everything is spooky and haunting, the music , visuals, his voice.
The piece is about a man , and someone is giving an account of him. These fatcs come through peoples own takes and of apprentaly what they’ve seen or heard about him. I love the idea of people conspiring behind this persons back. Chinese whispers, rumours, misconceptions.
They state they deserve to know what he’s doing. I really like the use of visuals. Almost looks like still photographs, but is infact video. Considering using still photographs in my animation.
- A character portrayal through other peoples views and experiences. Could be fabricated lies or the truth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMqxNPsfN50

Characters

Batman
When thinking of messed up characters, I thought of batman. I love the idea of his split personality. People argue he’s actually depicted as schizophrenic, which I fully agree with. His alter ego is meant to be Batman, however this eats him up and he is actually Batman, and Bruce Wayne is just a person he feels fit to be judged by the public eye. His messes up past of his parents being murdered sets the foundations of him becoming batman. He made a promise to them, that he feels always in debt of.

Rorschach
He’s actually one of my favourite characters from graphic novels.
He stinks. A calculated killer yet spontaneous. Driven character – hard as nails at 5’6.
No care for appearance. Bullied as a child. His mother was a prostitute.

Patrick bateman
A repressed wall street businessman.
He unleashes primal urges on unsuspecting victims as a reliefe of his frustration at his contempary lifestyle and the trap of the American yuppy dream.

Frank from ‘the wasp factory.’
Has odd religious rituals of his own inventions.
Uses sacrifice poles, ehich hang bodies heads of killed animals like rats. They define and protect the boarders of his territory according to him.
He’s cut off from society.
Very sexist views towards women.
Kills 3 children from his family as a child himself but see’s them as a matter of fact.

Fear and Loathing

I want to make this animation a little bit different from the obvious way to react to the brief. Eg. Not a man walking around – zooms into his brain that show his fears and aspirations ect....
I want my character to be someone that is abit dark and messed up. Someone like Rorschach from the Watchmen or Patrick Bateman from American Psyco. I would like to incorporate the idea of conspiracy and paranoia.

Paranoia
- anxiety - irrationality
- delusion - a threat

Greek original translation
= simply means madness. (para=outside: nous = mind)


After speaking with Dan about my direction he told me look at the following.
- Rear window ; Hitchock.
- Stressed Eric.
- Memento.
- German Expressionism.
- Noh theatre
- Jan Svankmeijer.
- Chris Morris, ‘My wrongs

D&AD Awards - sorry this is being posted very late

Ive decided to do the character portrayal brief from the D&AD, as I felt it was the one with most creative freedom. The other briefs seemed rather boring apart from the MTV one. I really didn’t like the thought of hundreds of people sending advert ideas to co-operative companies that they will probably just steal. At least this brief is from an animation company and not someone like bloody Powergen or British gas.

bERLIN - pART 1

BERLIN
Wow, where do I start? When first touching down on German soil, we were greeted off the plane with a smell of fresh sewage. There was murmuring amongst us hoping that all of Berlin didn’t reflect this smell. But those thoughts were temporally lived due to our excitement of arriving. When walking through arrivals, me and Zac noticed a guy holding a sign saying ‘Red 7’. “Wow, we did a project for them,” we both commented. Totally missing the fact that that guy was for us! Duh!
Once arriving at the street of the hostel, we went through a rather bizarre experience of actually getting in it. We got buzzed through a door only for it to lead us straight back outside! So, we went through another door which led to a lift. “Hotel transit floor 4,” the sign read. As we ascended in the lift, a strong smell of cigarettes and laughter of girls became louder and poignant. The doors opened... Girls in pyjama are chasing each other, bar, booze, smoke. We had arrived!
The hostel was not bad at all, good social area and nice sized rooms. The main selling point for us English was probably the 24 hour bar. As it was late, we weren’t going anywhere just yet and joyfully gulped down our massive glasses of beer and filled our lungs with smoke. I’ve never felt soo manly carrying four of those beers over to the table. A novelty that would last only a day or so, but still..
We awoke for the agreed time to meet for breakfast, everyone looking a little worse for wear, including myself, still actually feeling very pissed. Breakfast bemused the majority of us,(except Kristos) consisting of make yourself sandwiches. I didn’t know what to make of it and struggled to make myself something I could agree on. I was already missing full English breakfasts.
We slowly made our way to the Transmediale festival to pick up our tickets. A few of us broke off from the group and went to explore and make the most of out of our travel cards. I instantly felt that the city was overly spacious, calm and rather stunning at times. The architecture and design has a very interesting yet minimal feel, consisting of strange and unusual angles and shapes. Even the clothe shops kept to this minimal feel. The colour to the city was very dull and grey, all the same very interesting though. A shoe shop we came across really caught my eye. Its decor was rather urban and decayed. Almost looking like the decor and building is incomplete. They opted to show just show 3 single shoes on a concrete slap on the floor. That was about it, but it made me want to go in, and I thought it was really cool. I believe I found it refreshing not to see corporative logo’s splashed everywhere. This minimal feel, was becoming a recurring theme that the Bauhaus gallery would explain later to me.
That day we randomly got off at train stations and explored the areas without using a guide which was refreshing as it allowed me to get my own feel to the city. Getting lost along the way was a highlight, and when we found our way back we were rather disappointed that we knew where we were.
Throughout the week the spaciousness of the city put me into a Zen-like frame of mind. I could stop in the middle of the street of town without people barging into me. Unlike London, the packed like sardines aspect that puts me off wanting to live there. A striking point of Berlin was also how under populated the city seemed. At times you would believe that it was a ghost town.
More to come
- Transmediale Festival
- The Bauhaus Museum
- Interesting experiences. Panorama Bar, The Reichstag, Squat Gallery.