Month / December 2017

by maddycaulfieldrocketmailcom

Bestiary Weekly Summary 4

17th- 23rd December 2017

Development

This week I didn’t really progress too much, but I did purchase the supplies for my puppet, and did a mock up of what my character would look like as a hieroglyphic. This wasn’t very successful but I like the idea of it.

Areas for Development

Next I need to start my puppet so that I can begin experimenting and animating. I also want to begin storyboarding my ideas and start to think about what I would like as my background.

Resources

 

by maddycaulfieldrocketmailcom

Roland Barthes and Kurt Vonnegut

Roland Barthes was a french writer who developed 5 narrative codes, kind of like rules that make a good story. Although of course rules are made to be broken, they do provide a good idea of how to structure a narrative. The code that most applies to Jekyll and Hyde is the Hermeneutic code.

This is when elements of the story are left out or not explained, and exist as an ‘enigma’ and only the development of the story will provide answers. This will make the reader want to tie up these loose ends and keep reading. It provides suspense. In order to do this delaying tactics can be used, Barthes gives a few examples of this. ‘”Snares” (deliberate evasions of the truth), “equivocations” (mixtures of truth and snare), “partial answers,” “suspended answers,” and “jammings” (acknowledgments of insolubility)’. A good example of this being used is a detective novel, a murder/crime has happened and we as the reader and the detective have to piece together what happened, and we only find out the truth at the end. It is is important that the writer themselves knows what is going to happen in the end, so that they can block the truth in order to make it more suspenseful.

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes

 

Kurt Vonnegut is an american writer who came up with 8 rules for story writing:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/11/kurt-vonneguts-8-rules-for-writing-a-short-story/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut

by maddycaulfieldrocketmailcom

Bestiary Weekly Summary 3

10th-16th December 2017

Development

This week I began looking at more of a backstory for my character, which I found really fun. At the moment it is just a set of bullet points, but I think it would be interesting to write it out as a proper story. I also created some initial poses and expressions, and some concept art of the character in an environment. I think most that most of the expression from my character will be in the eyes and mouth, but I also want to start thinking about animating the body and fur, so that the character has a sense of weight.

Areas for Development

Next I need to start developing my puppet, and start sketching for other areas of the project such as the lifecycle and other characters that he might interact with. I will use some of the things I have mention in the background story to help with this.

Resources

I mostly used my imagination this week, as I did more work on the design rather than the research towards it. I used photo shop to create the poses, expressions and concept art.

by maddycaulfieldrocketmailcom

Thinking about a back story

I have been coming up with a few ideas about what my characters back story might be:

  • He is a beast that keep children company, but is very clumsy and mischievous so they always get in trouble
  • He is the last of his kind
  • Likes books, he appears out of the minds of children who need to escape the real world. He brings them back into it.
  • Maybe a world war two setting, the child is lonely because he has been evacuated
  • Their used to be lots of them when children still read lots and believed in things, now everyone grows up too fast so he is the only one left
  • This would make more sense if it were set in the modern day
  • He used to be a writers assistant, they used to live in the desert, but an Egyptian found him and he became his assistant. At first he kept spilling the paint but eventually learnt that his sharp teeth were great for sharpening tools. This tradition of a writer and his monster continued for hundreds of years, including shakespeare, who used to keep one in his ruffles. It is is rumoured that J.K.Rowling always had one on her desk to sharpen her pencils. Eventually they began to die out, as they had gotten so used to being looked after they could no longer fend for themselves. Until there was only one left. He has been passed down generations of successful writers, so the family was very rich. When Sir. Writalot was dying he tried to give the beast to his banker son, but he didn’t care so threw the little monster in the library and forgot about him. He also had a son himself, but was always cold and distant. He sent him to boarding school, and he only came home for a week at christmas. He was never allowed in the Library, because the father thought he would break the expensive books. But as the son grew older he became more and more curious. When he was 12 years old he snuck into the Library when his father was on a conference call. At first it was quiet, nothing interesting, but then he heard a scampering. It was coming from one of the book shelves. He followed the sound, and pulled a big, dusty book from the shelves, only to find a little orange monster cowering behind it. He was only 4 inches tall, with big, staring eyes. The little boy was scared but curious, so he moved closer and the monster tried to shy away. He said ‘don’t worry, I won’t hurt you’. And the monster slowly creeped forward. The little boy had some chocolate in his pocket that he tried to give to the monster, he sniffed it but turned his head in disgust. He then saw the little monster start to sniff and lick his lips at the sight of a pencil in his top pocket. The boy slowly handed it to him, and to his surprise the little monster chewed the whole thing up. The boy snuck in to see the monster everyday. When the boy had to leave for school, he took the monster with him by sneaking him in his pencil case. The boy became a hugely successful writer, and so the tradition lived on.
by maddycaulfieldrocketmailcom

Bestiary Weekly Summary 2

4th-9th December 2017

Development

This week I developed some more ideas and sketches using different animals and my own imagination as inspiration. I found it very useful to have lot son images to work from. I also started to look at other beasts that were similar to mine, such as Where the Wild Things Are, and other uses of a ‘friendly monster’. I really wanted to start working practically so I made a small model out of sculpy and plasticine. This didn’t go as plan, but it helped me to move my ideas in a better direction. Originally I thought it would interesting to have a puppet made of paper, but from making this initial model I moved away from the idea as it didn’t look how I wanted it too and would have been overly time consuming. From this I created more sketches and the character became a bit more friendly looking and more like a bear or a lion. I turned these sketches into a more polished digital turn around that will be the basis for making my puppet.

Areas for Development

My next area for development will be to come up with a more concrete backstory, and begin to look at how my character my move and react. I want to start creating some different facial expressions and start to work digitally, and I want the face to animated over the top of the puppet.

Resources

I mostly used images from google as inspiration for shape and texture, and from my sketches I began to think of other characters that it reminded me of. This included ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, ‘Big Hero 6’, ‘Yellow Submarine’, and ‘Monsters inc’.