alive in the attic

[thefreshestever]

i started this project almost two years ago and didn´t do anything with it the last year, i´ve just had too much work. but i decided to pick up on it again and to actually finish it! i think posting this here on the forums as a wip might help getting it done, and with your crits and suggestions i´m sure i will get better results.

 

first of all, here´s the story:

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

scene01 (ca 90 sek)

 

daylight shot. camera moves through the attic, slowly zooming in on the shoebox.

the doll lies in the shoebox, surrounded by other toys and stuff. it´s head is half ripped off, cotton batting is coming out of his neck. a spider crawls by and starts to stitch the head back on. afterwards the spider leaves.

 

 

 

scene02 (ca 120 sek)

 

camera shows a wide view of the attic. it´s night.it rains. moonlight is shining through the window.

cameraswitch to the doll in the box. as a thunderbolt strikes the doll abruptly sits up. it looks around puzzled, breathing heavily. the doll stands up, trying to stabilize itself in the shoebox full of stuff. as it climbs over the edge of the box it slips and falls down on the woodflooring. it stands up again, rubbing its head, looking around.

 

 

scene03 (ca 10 sek)

 

the doll sneaks through the attic, moves past the window, from the darkness into the moonlight and out again.

 

 

scene04 (ca 240 sek)

 

the doll notices the silhouette of an old desklamp in a corner, gropes the switch and tries to turn the lamp on, but nothing happens. it finds the plug and plugs it in. the light hits it right in the face, it holds one hand before its eyes and swivels the head of the lamp into another direction, tries to get a picture of the nearer surrounding.

 

the lightcone freezes at a pile of polaroid-pictures. the doll walks to the pile and takes a look at it. every single picture shows the doll, hanging in the attic with a thin white rope around his neck, it´s head halfway ripped off. frightened it throws away the pictures, runs to another corner of the attic, crouches down.

 

 

scene05 (ca 90 sek)

 

the camera view now from the top, somewhere in the woodwork, looking down at the doll, still sitting frightened in the corner. the doll tries to stay awake, but falls asleep soon.

 

 

scene05 (ca 90 sek)

 

dawn. birds are singing, light is rising though the window. the doll lies in the shoebox again, the head half ripped off.

 

 

scene06 (ca 90 sek)

 

cameramovement through the attic, focussing on a polaroid-camera that is lying in a corner near the pictures. the spider is crawling from behind on top of the camera.

 

THE END

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

the story is kinda open, so please tell me what your interpretation of the story is, what you think i´m trying to say with it.

 

almost everything is modeled and textured by now and i´m starting to animate.

 

i´m trying to get a "timburton-like" stopmotion feel to it, so i´m rendering at 12 fps. it took a long long time to figure out the right lighting setup, but i´m very satisfied with the result by now. i´m rendering in 1280x720 and using AO, so it takes some time to render. the attached 5 sec sneakscene for instance was rendering about 5 days or so. i hope now with v16 and a faster computer render times will speed up a lot.

 

the soundtrack will be completely made with my iphone, i thought it would be a fun thing to do. the music in the sneakscene was made with a cute little app called "bebot" a very intuitive to play synthesizer and i´m going to use it for most of the scenes i guess.

 

so here are some models and tests i made so far, the titlescreen and the sneakscene (wich are pretty much final, just got to get rid of the jumping of the waterdrops on the window)

 

i hope you will like it.

titlescreen_low.mov

sneaktest_720x405_lower.mov

01_01_camstest_low.mov

[Fuchur]

That looks terrific! Nice character and fine movement!

 

*Fuchur*

[Walter Baker]

Awesome! I love it!

Look forward to more.

Great rain in the second clip.

[robcat2075]

That's looking good!

[Gerry]

Wow, everything here looks terrific! Really believable spider movement that works even with the cartoony test-render look. Looking forward to more!

[dblhelix]

WONDERFUL!

compelling, you can smell the wood, the doll looks good, color scheme is naively nasty and i like the cold, soft light.

 

you've made a burton-fan fanatic, so here goes;

1- are you likening the camera to the spider? the "view now from the top, somewhere in the woodwork, looking down at the doll"

gave that inkling, but camera movement in the beginning did not? dollying is a rather large device, and serves you best when either "invisible" or used with a very singular emphasis, a clear purpose. you're sure you've played out all chances cutting between still images in the beginning could give you?

 

- a tree between the light and the window, shadow giving motion to the stills, scares in the cuts

- the wind could come and go, stopping the shadowplay, simply by using sound

- a car passing by once could animate large areas, the moving lamps throwing the light upward

 

2- that dark inky-blotchy-thing at the end of "sneaktest", is that a transition you're going to use? (it looks really good!) if yes, it would also play heavily into the camera-philosophy? or, together with the fade-into-light after titles, they would play into the general abstraction in components, which benefits from a meticulous, clean approach. - this is still regarding the dollying, just making sure you've gone the distance with that decision.

 

3 - i can't help wondering why you're not playing up the horror? just a little bit? purrleaaase? it would not make the film any less, so to speak, but that's a matter of opinion of course. i think a serious story can contain horror, and horror can be manufactured in many ways to suit different needs.

 

4 - a hypothesis: if you play up the fear, play up the tragedy, you could show the doll making the connection from the polaroid to the web.

his situation is abstracted enough, your components are abstract enough, you would benefit from going down-to-earth when building his emotion and motivation. it gives an emotional doorway to viewers, and really, really packs that much more punch. and all this without abandoning the style i think you're going for.

 

in case you're not used to showing material to others, let me just say that this lengthy a response means you've touched me, inspired and motivated me greatly. doesn't happen every day, y'know. thanks so much for an exciting script and images, i'm down with fever and you've just made my day!

[itsjustme]

Looks great so far, Sebastian!

[thefreshestever]

thanks for the feedback everyone.

 

 

@ dblhelix:

 

to 1: yes, the camera in this one particular scene is meant to be the view of the spider, but only in this scene. i thought it would help to transport the idea that the spider is lurking without showing it. the dollying at the beginning is supposed to draw the viewers attention to the shoebox, mostly i´m going to have fixed cameras in the scenes without any movement. great idea with the moving tree btw

 

to 2: yes, it´s a transition, it´s an effect called "film burn" in after effects.

 

to 3: what exactly do you have in mind?

 

to 4: great idea, i will definately do that!

 

i´m glad i was able to make your day, i hope it was not just the fever talkin

get well soon!

[jimd]

excellent work

[Shelton]

Excellent! Very Nice

 

Steve

[TheSpleen]

pure excellence!

[Paul Forwood]

This looks very promising, Sebastian! I guess that you were inspired by Burton's "9", which I still haven't seen, and maybe that is necessary to understand the story. I wouldn't like to guess what has brought about this continuously looping nightmare or who the sadistic perpetrator of the crime is but I am intrigued. The polaroid camera puzzles me.

[thefreshestever]

thanks...

 

@paul: in fact i was inspired by the sackboy-character from the playstation-game "little big planet". it was just a few weeks after i finished modelling the character when i first saw the trailer of "9"... i thought it was really creepy how similar the characters looked. after that i added the stitches at the joints because it looked so damn cool on the 9-characters. and no, so it´s not nescessary to watch 9 to get the story, it has nothing to do with it. sounds like your interpretation of the story is pretty much what i´m trying to tell, it´s a metaphor to what happened to me over the last few years. but don´t worry, MY nightmare is over now

 

btw: you should watch 9, the look of this movie is more than brilliant... the story could have been a little more quiet, too much action for my taste.

[pixelplucker]

Looking forward to seeing the finish movie, looks great!

 

On the intro you might want to drop the text down so it doesn't wash out over the glare from the window. Dropping it down will draw a little more attention to it also.

[John Bigboote]

Compelling!

[thefreshestever]

just finished the animation for scene01 with the spider stitching the head back on and leaving the scene. it´s really a pain in the ... to animate a creature with 8 legs! still nedds a little tweaking here and there, but i´m pretty much there. the yarn will be composited in after effects later.

scene01_spider_leaving_low.mov

[TheSpleen]

Looks like a winner to me.

[pixelplucker]

yup looks good

[dblhelix]

yes, stitching looking good.

 

to 1: yes, (...) i thought it would help to transport the idea that the spider is lurking without showing it.

and so it does. it will work. i was gathering impressions.

 

to 2: yes, it´s a transition, it´s an effect called "film burn" in after effects.

if you use a ready-made effect, here's my number one tip for AE: at least double it.

 

if it's anything other than blur, the first thing i do is double the layer and then go nuts starting with the top one on 20-40 opacity. try anything, everything. any additional effect, offset, colors, color masks, noise (i tend to scale a lot) - and then run the layers through layer modes starting with the top layer. you can find tiny or massive things no one's ever seen because no one ever looked. they give a personal touch to using a good program.

 

to 3: what exactly do you have in mind?

glad you liked the idea of showing, very welcome to it, and what i mean comes after the showing. well you can start before: do you show the connection to viewers before letting the doll figure out what's up. or do we find out as he does? either is ok, depending on how you want to play it.

 

it's all about building suspense.

 

the horror -and tragedy- comes from him understanding his situation. what does he do? how do you show it, pace it? it can be done in many ways (music plays a huge part here) and doesn't necessarily require that much animation either, just shots. you're looking at 10 new shots (at least) to render.

having a lid to the box complicates things - why doesn't he just take shelter in the box under the lid? you might have the lid broken in half, one half missing.

 

if you want to animate, you can do a lot here. he could try to find cover. he could climb the big boxes with the help of a hook and a string - only to find out that there's some head-stuffing and a long piece of thin white rope in a loop on top.. maybe he tries to find a weapon of sorts, trying things out. or maybe the doll tries to find comfort holding a tin soldier with a gun. the situation is very inspiring, as you can see .

 

but without a doubt, he'll be looking out for the spider.

and it's still all about how you show it.

 

you could take a day to brainstorm, see what comes up and what you've time to do.

and check this out, how self-evident it might feel, try and read - i thought of this due to the confines of the scene - the emptiness of the attic:

the shot tells the story

and this

basic staging principles

 

the dollying at the beginning is supposed to draw the viewers attention to the shoebox

yes i see. editing could also help you do the same. still not saying that dollying won't work, just not entirely convinced.

 

i hope it was not just the fever talkin

get well soon!

i knew you'd say that, was just too tired for a pre-emptive disclaimer! and thanks, just writing this made time fly by amidst all boredom. up and running soon enough. looking forward to more.

(withholding one last idea till i see your camera in action, with transitions. bit of a gimmick, might not help at all.)

[thefreshestever]

i´ll give the thing with the transition a shot, always better to use something unique, you´re right.

 

i want the viewer to find out when the doll does, i think it´s more dramatic that way. i´m gonna try to transport this with music, some close-up shots of details in the photographs and the expression on his face and by throwing away the pictures and running away. i think that´s going to work, if not, i´ll have to add some more shots. i´m not completely sure yet where he´s going to hide exactly, i will just have to try out a few different shots, let´s see what looks best. that "finding out and hiding"-part of the movie is definately going to be the hardest part regarding the shots and animation, at the moment i think less is more, i could be wrong though. maybe a fast switching of different cameras from different angles of the attic while he´s running away could amplify his fear of being watched at this moment.

 

thanks for the links, i´ll read into that later, i´m curious about the "the shot tells the story" article, since wall-e is one of my favorite cg-movies of all times

 

thanks for your effort, much appreciated!

[largento]

Very impressive! This is going to be something special!

 

Have you experimented with the Technocrane model any?

[thefreshestever]

never heard of it before! what is it?

[largento]

Check it out in this thread.

[thefreshestever]

sweet that´s really awesome, i will definately use it! thanks for the hint!

[dblhelix]

so you did have more exact shots planned, just didn't tell. all sounds good, is it opening night yet? he he.

 

i´m not completely sure yet where he´s going to hide exactly

one of the strengths here is, that it doesn't seem he has a place to hide. just communicate that well, and it gives horrific payoff!

 

maybe a fast switching of different cameras from different angles of the attic while he´s running away could amplify his fear of being watched at this moment.

A-HAAA! see, stuff like this is crucial in films like this. ok, officially withdrawing remarks on dollying. you have made the camera an independent mover altogether. can't wait to see more!

[thefreshestever]

the next scene - the doll becoming alive... still not happy with all of the movement when it´s climbing out of the shoe box and some things after the fall... not sure what´s wrong though...

waking_up.mov

[TheSpleen]

I love all of it

[dblhelix]

not sure what´s wrong though...

 

let it simmer. do another scene. come back to this. repeat.

since it's a doll you can pretty much make him whatever?

 

on a glance, his eyes are out of frame just a little too long given the length of the first scene.

when he moves it feels he just woke up, it looks good, as does the stumble. you could play with that to make it seem more accidental=sudden but it works just fine the way it is. it's "morning".

 

when he sits up, you could test what the arms can do when lifting the body up. try doing this yourself, in front of a mirror, to find a normal way of doing it, but do take a while to figure how your doll would do it. that is a moment where a little effort can go a long way. this could be about the placement/movement of the palms against floor. since the doll's fate is hanging, you've chosen gravity as a major player in the film.

 

when he looks around his neck rotation shows mechanical behaviour while his hand rubbing head is quite organic behaviour. for some reason, it feels good to know whether the doll is more robotic than human. ragdoll with organic tendencies will probably win you empathy. test moving the neck slightly up-down during sideways movement, pausing/slowing the head rotation as if eyes lingered a moment on something?

[thefreshestever]

thanks..

i dont have a mirror big enough, but i´ll film myself sitting up... that´s always the best choice when you´re stuck, thanks for reminding me...

totally right about the head when he´s looking around, that needs to be refined...

[largento]

I think it's fine the way it is, but looking at it hard and really picking it apart:

 

You might try overlapping some the movements. There is a definite sense that he is making one movement at a time, starting and stopping with each one. Overlapping them, will give the movement more fluidity. If you want him to have that kind of start and stop movement, maybe exaggerate the follow-through? For the fall, you might have him moving forward as he puts his foot out there and show that he is moving his center of gravity outside of the box and it feel more like he's losing his balance when he falls. Instead of having him rest his weight on his upper thigh, move it back more towards his center. That way you get the sense that he's already committed to moving forward when his other foot catches on the side of the box. Right now it feels like he leads into the fall with his shoulder. I feel like he should be moving forward then his foot stop his movement and then the quick fall.

 

I would also cut the first shot of him falling sooner and start the next shot with him already in the frame. From where we left him in the first shot, he would already be visible in the second shot. It seems strange that he disappears.

 

When he hits, I would expect a rag doll to maybe bounce more, but it's not really a hard hit: it's kind of a flip/roll he's doing, so maybe there would be more follow-through and his head would come up and then it could hit hard on the floor when it goes back down. Right now his rear end seems to take the brunt of his fall, but he rubs the back of his head.

[thefreshestever]

thanks mark... that´s good advice, i´ll work on that...

[thefreshestever]

didn´t have that much time the last week, but here´s a little update... i´m pretty much satisfied with it now, maybe i´ll get back to it for some little tweaks here and there later after i watched it a million times or so

waking_up.mov

[NancyGormezano]

Looks terrific. Love the character & camera work & animation. The breathing is an especially nice touch.

[TheSpleen]

A+

[dblhelix]

yupp. character comes alive. nice. it was a good week!