Group Work
Our first day on this project was exciting, we sat around a whiteboard and together came up with all the different things we could make for the different rooms we were imagining. We thought about doing a medieval kitchen and making tons of cutlery and food, worktops, stoves and crockery. We discussed a bedroom, with a grand bed and wardrobe. We even thought about doing a courtyard with decaying trees and dying grass, cracked pavement and mountains in the distance and a moon shining natural light.
In the end, however, we decided on a foyer, dining room and office space; desks, clocks, tables, bookshelves, a grand staircase and a large fireplace. Other ideas for smaller assets were thrown around, like a mirror and frame, wax candles, an armoured knight or gargoyle and spooky skulls and debris. Now that we had our assets in mind, we sat down and discussed styles.
Art Direction
Our style idea came pretty quickly, the theme was ‘wonky’! We talked about scenes from animations that featured a haunted house/mansion and we picked apart the objects’ designs; why did these artists design the furniture in that way? It became pretty clear, angular and wonky was a main feature in most of these inspirations. To break it down, the sharpness and tilted appearance looks quite unnatural, and therefore its easy to manipulate this into design to provoke a feeling of uneasiness. Some good examples we found were from these;
‘Claws for Alarm’ was actually recommended by Michael to us, the design of the objects is exactly what we were looking for; top heavy and angular, and the use of colour here was actually a big inspiration for me.
The furniture in this old mickey mouse short is also close to what we were wanting to achieve, everything is wonky or broken, top heavy, blocky and angular, the walls, tables, stairs etc.
The original Addams Family (live action) also has great set design, and we used that as inspiration for our assets as well. Monster House has elements we liked, the living furniture idea is fun and the anatomy design motif is something we actually used for our own concepts! Alongside these inspirations we also had written down some research of other media; the live action Crimson Peak, Tim Burton animated films, the Sonic short ‘Night of the Werehog’, and various games.
The games we had researched actually influenced us the most. Luigi’s Mansion, Bernadette, and Little Nightmares were the perfect reference material for us.
We set up a miro board, which holds all of our inspirations and references. This also kept us organised when in the production stages.
Concept Art
Taking advice from last year, I drew up concepts for multiple assets but focussed on the silhouette. I still need practise with this, but it really helped with coming up with ideas quickly and seeing if the shape fit our art direction, rather than spending time making a fully shaded drawing of a concept that may not even be used.
I was especially taken with designing a fireplace, the initial sketches I had were fine but I wanted to build on them a bit more. My personal favourite was the sharp, top heavy triangular fireplace, but as we had already started to mention the idea of having the furniture based off of anatomy, the ‘open mouth’ design worked far better. The bricks here are meant to look like teeth, and the fireguard at the base would hopefully help this look if I modelled it to be like a bottom row. The idea being if the fireplace was lit, the shadow casted would look like an open mouth. I had an idea for a long rug as well that could lead up to the fireplace and look like a forked tongue, which would add more anatomical feature design elements to the scene! We were committed to this idea now.
Last year’s concept art/design theory classes covered shape design, so I took what I learned from that and tried to apply it to all of my assets as best I could. Top heavy is imposing, and will add to the unease, and the triangular shape is sharp and when used in this kind of setting, can even seem threatening, especially when inverted like this! The triangular designs I feel are quite strong, but once again the wider fireplace would look better, with the iconography of the anatomy theme.
Individual Research
As this scene will be individually set up and rendered, I wanted to explore some media for scene shot, colour and lighting inspiration. One of the most well known eras of cinema that relates to our project is German expressionism; namely films like Nosferatu, Vampyr, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis (not a horror, but I still find it unnerving!). German silent horror films contain a lot of interesting shot design that greatly add to the tension, I think the Dutch angles (camera tilt) and camera rotation are especially effective. Another characteristic of German expressionism is high angle shots, they certainly do add to the atmosphere but probably wouldn’t be used in my scene, which I imagine wouldn’t have a high enough set for it to work.
Typically, the colour theme for haunted houses is black, red/orange, green and purple, these colours together contrast so much that, again, can cause an uneasy atmosphere. When I think of haunted mansions/houses, I think of vibrant green, orange and red lighting, contrasting with dark surroundings. On the other hand, I also imagine a mostly greyscale, dreary atmosphere, this also links to German expressionism with its deep, contrasting shadows. With dark shadows, blue tints and mellow lighting; it gives off a more abandoned, melancholy message, whereas the vibrancy of the iconic Halloween colours seem more ‘spooky’ (spooky-silly), than ‘scary’.
As we designed our concepts to be chunky and very stylised with sharp angles and anatomy theme, I thought the best colour palette choice would be vibrant, with high contrast and flamboyant lighting, to appear more ‘luigi’s mansion’ spooky (sillier) than ‘little nightmares’ spooky (just scary really). I love horror films, and one of my absolute favourites is the 1977 film Suspiria, which is known for its bold choice of colours which complements the film’s campy nature. I would love to include the vibrant contrasting colours from Suspiria, and ‘Claws for Alarm’, or perhaps explore the cooler colours as ‘Night of the Werehog’ did.
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