Short story - Performance & character - Alone in the woods

Alone in the woods

I wish i had more time to work on the short story as telling stories is something i really want to stregthen and puruse in the future. I didn't want to treat it like an excerise mash up even though i knew some of the excerises would seep in naturally. My intention for the final excerise was to create a short orginal and engaging story. Probably asking too much of myself but i like to push the limits and test what im really capable of.

I went through a writers block and struggled to come with something good, mostly leaning towards a comedic story but I didnt like the route it was taking. So i thought I'd explore a genre i really enjoy but would't really associate with animation; horror. After a quick brainstorm session i settled on this idea.

Logline: An elderly widow lives alone in the woods but is she really alone?

Character Bio

Name: Beth 

Age: 83

Height: 5'5

Weight: 135 lbs

Background: Grew up on a farm and was not very wealthy. Married her highschool sweetheart and built their home in the woods together. 

Personality: Soft spoken and extremely hard worker. 

Hobby: Magician

Occupation: Farmer/herb seller 

Pets: N/A she out lived them all 

Friends & Family: Beth has outlived most of her friends and her husband 

Where is it set? The woods of Perthshire Scotland 

What is happening? Beths not used to being alone in her home however she doesnt feel completely alone...

Who’s there?   ...

Why is it happening? You shouldn't be in the woods alone... 

Animatic 

I thought it would be best to storyboard and visualize my story as a whole. In the story Beth can sense something is outside her home in the woods. She tries to close the window but its jammed open. She wants to get away from the window and hide. while shes hobbling along she see her fireplace going out. Already terrified she reaches for the matches and candle to give her a bit of light but when she lights her candle we see that she really isn't alone after all.




I thought her shuffle/limp across would be the most difficult and laborious task to do so i thought it would be best to start with that.




I started as i normally do, with the extremes but i didn't link this armature design, it had no volume and the proportions seemed off to me. Also I wasnt partcularly happy with the staging of the scene, so i thought it be best to stay closer to reference as it wont complicated if i struggle on any of the poses.




Maintaining volumes seems to be the hardest part of animatmating im finding, it would be best if i did some more excerises like the bouncing ball to make my self better and to play squash and stretch more often as its not something i tend to do. I watched this video by Aaron Blaise explaining the concept of wipes to convey quick movements, i thought it could be used really effectively in the right spots.



I orginally had it timed exactly to the reference but i found that it was far too long as well as it it increased the amount of inbetweens i had to greatly. I also chose not to the arms and shoulders becuase i was uncdeiced on how much i wanted her to turn back, because i was at a stage where i was considering changing my story as i realised it was far too much to complete and the orginal storytelling was heavily reliant on the lighting which would mean i would to either colour or shade the whole scene as well as animate the fire. I discovered a lot doing this one animation, one of which is that i hadn't settled on a solid construction for my character and was changing how i built the character midway between frames. So started to familarise myself more the character.

I hadn't gotten to the full turnaround but i felt like the expressions where quite strong. Also it felt good to be drawing in photoshop again, I had forgotten how nice it felt to have custom brushes and now flash feels quite jammy and ugly to use. Starting in Toonboon in the new year is something i want to do as i have heard good things about the brushes and painting tools they contain. Now i had fimilarised myself more with the character I was much more confident moving on the to next scene




I was really suprised with how quickly i managed to animated this scene, with the facial feaetures too. I normally end up saving multiple different versions because of how long i take on one scene but for this one i did it all in one go, i could of done it even quicker if i wasnt so easily distracted. I was still left with the problem of changing the ending of my story, so i went looking for through some horror clips on youtube for inspiration. I came across this chucky scene where the old man gets so scared he has a heart attack, i thought this would be a really easy yet difinitive ending to my story



Also i was speaking to Rob and showed me this Simpson scene where homer has a heart attack which i thought was great.

Now that i had settled on an ending i was happy with i could move on all i need was a reference, so asked Maddy to be actress and she gave me a great performance to work with.



This was the the third attempt I made maddy do because I'm an idiot and kept taking a picture instead of pressing record. I felt the the reference was really good and had a lot I could work with. First and most important thing was defining the the key poses and capturing the motion of the fall and heart attack. I really focused on selecting on strong silhouettes to show that she is having a heart attack. After I had done the breakdowns I noticed that there was still a lot of space inbetween of the frame. I felt like this was the perfect opportunity to use wipes to quickly move across the space.




I felt that the I had done a good job on the timing and had the potential to be one of my strongest pieces even. I thought I had done enough of the roughing and could move on to the line work. About half way through inking the face I realised that I was struggling to maintain the proportions of the head during the head turn. I think when I come back to this I can still use this layer but switch to a smaller brush and lighter colour and rough everything from the face to the clothes, that hopefully should make the inking process less painful and quicker to do.







I edited everything in premiere and I'm please with outcome especially considering I had been doing it for less than a week. I'm sure I'm going to finish the story, and still won't be happy with out come. I think I'm starting to realise that is ok I'm not going to love the final product of everything I do, all I can do it try my best to enjoy the process. 2-D animation
is something I've really enjoyed and I can't wait to move into toonboon and keep improving. There is a lot of things I can improve in this animation and I believe my line work is an area I need to improve if I want to have strong pencil tests.