Group Animate Narrative (Semester 2 Week 1)

Last week we were put into groups and discus ideas for a story set around the word ‘Escape’.

We got a whiteboard and some pens and started throwing ideas at it. Each of us would suggest an idea and then write that out on the board. Our pens ran out so we switched to paper for the next bit.

After we had our basic ideas laid out we then decided to do a little vote, each person chose the idea they liked the most, then we took those and chose the most popular among them. We ended up shortening the list and eventually we chose the story idea of puppets trying to escape from a villainous puppet master.

We spent some time sketching out ideas and figuring out how the puppet idea would work. One of the limitations we were given was that our characters couldn’t have any visible legs, so the puppets would need to move around by crawling or pulling themselves along objects. We also talked about the tone, we wanted to make it a horror short but we were still talking about whether it should be more comedic like ‘Gremlins’, or make it more serious and dark. Finally we talked about setting but we didn’t get a lot done in that aspect, just deciding that it should be where the puppeteer makes the puppets.

For the second week I’m going to be looking into other media for inspiration on this. Some things that come to mind are ‘Coraline’ for the connection to dolls and surreal horror, and horror games like ‘Hello Puppets’. I want the puppets to be quite expressive and cartoony, but realistic enough to fit the tone. I don’t have a ton of ideas about the Puppeteer but I imagine they would be a slow slouching figure maybe with long dragging arms. I can imagine him wearing pretty dirty clothes like the dad in Coraline.

I also had one idea for a shot near the end where the Puppeteer is reaching for a puppet and we see the hand moving towards the camera, so I imagine the Puppeteer having really gross hands and nails, claw-like nails to add an animalistic element.