Narrative and Storyboard planning (Semester 2 Week 2)

This week were we meant to discuss as a group our story for the animated short then each of us would go and design our own storyboards, next time we’d meet up we would discuss which one us the best. Unfortunately only me and one other person from my group were in during Wednesday so we didn’t get a lot done that day, although we did throw around some ideas.

We decided that we should go for a more serious horror tone and that the Puppeteer should be the villain. We were thinking about whether we should have the puppets hiding from the Puppeteer and where. There were some good ideas like a few puppets hiding in a box and closing the lid, or a puppet dragging itself behind some tools. Me and Padraig were talking about making sure each puppet sticks to a style, because each person will be designing their own puppet it’s important that they all look similar enough to not be confusing. I showed Padraig the Hello Puppets game, and he showed me a real life toy line called Melissa and Doug puppets. I think both work well because they’re expressive and simple so it should be good to design around.

After Wednesday we did get more done online over Discord. We got a setting decided, a garage workshop with boxes of torn up puppets with the living puppets hiding. Only a few windows and maybe a lamp to cast some sinister shadows . Each puppet would be hiding in it’s own spot while the puppeteer would stalk around the workshop. We also talked about the game Little Nightmares as a visual inspiration for the Puppeteer. That game has loads of horrifying characters with long distorted arms and creepy slow movements. The game also has a really interesting way of warping it’s world to look more stylized which could be interesting to try and replicate. Specifically with the Puppeteer we agreed that we don’t want to show all of him, just his shadow, shoes and hands.

This would be to really drive up the horror as well as make it easier for us to animate. The visual designs for the hands could be like the Janitor from that game.

We’re going to meet up in person before the next lecture to compare story notes and storyboards.