Final animation link

Rationale

My animation aimed to create a dramatic horror recreation of Big (1988)'s iconic keyboard scene under a different genre, the one I chose being drama/horror.
I wanted to use the classic screeching strings music, or echoing organ music similar to Dracula. For this idea I wanted to use a makeshift keyboard using wineglasses like the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy  featured on Youtube, only with blood instead of water to fulfill my 'horror' theme.

However, when I tracked down Darren Curtis' royalty free music channel featuring Creepy Horror Bell Music Halloween #2 2013 I changed my idea to a keyboard made from reverberating knives, like rows of tuning forks, as bells and knives are both made of metal and make a more plausibly similar sound.








The animation I planned used animated lights to increase the 'drama' of my shots and add to the loud, dramatic notes of the song, as well as accentuate the accuracy of the 'notes' my character hits.

.My chosen music have a slow dramatic beginning that builds to a dramatic crescendo at the end, thus I imitated this build in my storyboard and shots, starting with simply a hand, building to two hands, the reveal of the character, reveal of the scene, to the final shocking stab of the knife to finish of my character's 'bow'

 This worked very well to accomplish a dramatic feel.

Things I notice now in my final animation that I wish I had time to do better is the cape animation. Since the cape was trailing behind the exaggerated hand movements that moved very fast, it became difficult for me to decide what action the cape should be doing at a certain point of time, and with limited time I was not able to create in my opinion satisfactory animation for these secondary actions. The cape glitched in places that were visible, in some instances in attempt to fix the glitching there were too many keyframes creating a juttering effect, and in some scenes I forgot to keep the pole vector for it still until the next shot, creating awkward background gliding/floating.

I also wished I had thought to add painted shadows and blood splatters to my character and prop's textures to create a better illusion of depth, reality, and 'horror'. The initial background I had planned would have hanging pig carcasses and blood splatters on the wall, like a highly unhygienic Hannibal, Thus the character and prop would have looked out of place if they weren't covered in blood stains. However I did not have the time to add these details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAxjngMl1PI
https://youtu.be/jeOY62GcMWs
Back up Youtube links

3D initial blocking out of my piano knife table. May rearrange knives so they look less cut/pasted into place.

Cotton texture, http://i.imgur.com/EEjPuzg.jpg
Silk texture https://humidfruit.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/raw-silk-7.jpg
Metal texture http://img00.deviantart.net/0392/i/2010/149/2/9/metal_texture_by_beyn.jpg

Storyboard so far

timing is to this link

2nd, shorter version of song
http://picosong.com/mrb6

Colour selection.

I tended to make the eyes pale yellow because I wanted them to 'glow' slightly like predator eyes in the dark

I experimented with mainly  tuxedo-like colour schemes for the main clothing because orchestra performers typically wear tux-like formal wear.

I decided on the fourth colour scheme because red made the character look too gaudy as seen in colour scheme 1, and the addition of purple offset the gaudy feel and added a tint of chaos and playfulness, as it looks a little like purple wine stained red satin like he lost control of his drinks one night and rolled with it.

I played around with existing treble/bass cleff fusion designs

And toyed with putting it on the mask, but decided not to.

Digital turn around with chosen colour scheme.

Scale of table to character

I decided to have 3 sets of chords since small, portable keyboards typically have 4 sets of chords but then it looks too crowded and confusing on the table.

I chose my knives from this informative selection

Expression Sheet. Probably will only end up using maniacal laughter, glee, and self satisfied smirks for the brief 6 seconds, and there won't be any secondary characters for him to interact with to give sassy or pissed off remarks at, but those are there to display his personality. I also toyed with the idea of putting a melded bass cleff/treble cleff symbol on his mask but scrapped it due to the need to simplify things down, not complicate them.

Hand drawn turn around I did, discovering that my character will be 9 1/2 heads tall, 7 of those heads being legs and hips alone.
I also decided his tie from the first initial concept should be ripped and undone as is his chaotic nature to neglect formal wear. I also decided the bowl cut would either be undivided, or have three top parts and 4 bottom parts.

Simplifying it Down

Here I had to consider what my character and props would look three dimensional, so I tried drawing these contour lines  for the mask and bowl cut hair.  the body is simplified to mostly triangles and rectangles, which would translate to cones and cylinders.

I also had to consider how many knives I wanted on the keyboard/piano. I considered 8 for the 8 c-major Do Re Me Fa So La Ti notes, but I decided I could simply copy and paste these 8 multiple times to get a full keyboard if need be. I also considered if the 'cut' of the table should be decorative or not to fit the showman motif.

I also toyed around with a skull candle to light the scene, but in the end scrapped it because the table is crowded enough with 20 knives.

I considered stabbing all the knives into the side of the table to look more like actual piano keys, and when flicked they'ed ping up and down and make sense to resonate, but this looked less threatening than the laid out knives so I experimented some more with representing my knife layout as a keyboard.

A pipe organ, a very dramatic instrument, can have two layers of keys to look more dramatic, I could have a 2 layered table like two tier cake tray, but the number of keys could complicate how convincing I can animate the song, and how large the prop will be relative to the character.

I also started experimenting with knife layout to represent the keyboard, with shorter knives darkened with bloodstains to be the small black keys and larger, cleaner knives being the white keys. While this wouldn't make sense musically (which would be largest to smallest to get the right organisation of 'sound') it helps make a visual connection to a keyboard.

At this point I also decided that since knives were a metallic instrument that bell music would be more suited to my piece than strings, pipe organs, or wine glasses. So I decided to use this music.

Development

Mask developments. Started off with a more modern leather-horror mask design that started adding chaotic crazy elements to it, exaggerating eyes and teeth. I had to decide whether the mask would totally obscure the face or the top half. Initial concepts were full face masks, however I decided it would be easier to tell the character's expression if the mask only covered the upper half of the face.

Concept of knife layout (I also considered having half filled wine glasses of blood, but knives left more of an impression and are quite frankly, more fun to draw) and camera angle for this scene. I changed the wings to a cape, because it didn't make much sense for the character to have angelic wings, but without something there the design felt lacking, and nothing says 'dramatic flair' quite so well as a performer's phantom of the opera cape.

(DRAMA)

However a cape is still cliche and difficult to animate, so I decided to go for something more unusual and decided to make his cape made of a string of enlarged circus flags that connected at the back.

I did a small sketch of a performer's bow at the end of my clip here. The circus flags were uneven and chaotic, but too many to animate simply. I also experimented with my character's hands, as I didn't really want him to have skeleton hands and since he was going to be a performer, I wanted to add magician's gloves. Or tried 'exaggerated claw hands' to further make my character more demonic.I decided the circus flag cape would connect from the cuff link to the back of the shoulder. Also circus flags also support the motif of 'performer' I have going for my character.

Initial art. Shelved concept from last term. Exploring skeletal seedy salesman-esque character and his merry band of masked children.

The scene I want to recreate is the keyboard scene from Big, and convert it into a horror genre. I want to use creepy wine glass or strings music instead, as wine glasses create a resonance that is unique and surreal. However as a lot of horror music uses cacophonous or unsettling strings in their sound tracks, I may have better luck finding music using strings instead.

For the masks I drew inspiration from mainly were Kitsune masks, as I wanted the character to be more apparent as a chaotic individual.


I ultimately decided on a more feline mask, as it would help keep my character from relying on Japanese designs.

This was a secondary character design I did to experiment with the idea of a character at a table instead of a floor based keyboard.

I also think I'd want the mask to be 'made' out of an old bit of wood, so that it would have visible splits in the paint from age and would show underlying wood grain.