Working Animatic

I wanted to look at complementary colours to use in my film, red/green, blue/orange and yellow/purple to create a dramatic effect as the colours look harsh when put next to each other, and they could effectively represent the seediness and nasty life style surrounding the club.

Working Animatic

I do not want my design to be too grotesque as the design needs to contrast heavily with the grotesque figure we see after the mutilation of the body. I like the idea of metamorphosis: from human to monster, although not seen completely, the change is suggested. My reasoning for this was I wanted the viewers to be shocked by her sudden transformation rather than see it happen it front of their eyes. Her state of mind metamorphoses during the animation from a happy go lucky nature where the visual form is normal to a very unhappy, ugly persona. This is like a backward narrative to the Disney film ‘Beauty and the Beast’ when the ugly beast is at first mean and nasty but changes to a nice friendly handsome prince at the end of the film.

While researching on the internet I found stories and images about people who have resorted to attempting to perform plastic surgery procedures on themselves with horrific results. One such case in the news is of Hang Mioku, a pretty 28 year old; she thought that injecting herself with cooking oil could enhance her lips in the same way as the professional expensive treatments of botox had. I like the idea of injecting oil into the lips for my character and I have decided that I want my character to use extreme measures to change her appearance and ends up maiming her body in the desire to become popular again.

As I want the film to have a serious message, I discarded plot ideas including wearing a corset which then bursts on stage, stomach stitches bursting out, water balloons for boobs, falling over because of breasts being too big etc. for being too slapstick. Also I discarded the idea of sabotage between the two characters e.g. holes in tights, grease on pole or itching powder and hair dyed green, diet pills, teeth whitening with bleach. Most of these ideas may have added a comedic element to the animations which is not the effect I want. I want to have a more dramatic film that has a serious message behind it.

The idea of harming yourself to try and stay youthful reminded me of the film ‘Death becomes her’ in which Meryll Streep and Goldie Hawn’s characters desire to stay young forever ultimately results in the destruction of their bodies at the end of the film. Similarly, in my film the extreme surgery performed by my character on herself can only end in disaster for her.

Some of the ideas that I have had while developing my final script are a love interest with a man who rejects Loretta after plastic surgery. This was dismissed after talking with Adam who thought the animation only needed the two contrasting characters and the man would complicate it. The ending has been an issue too. I wanted to have a sad ending as I want the show that an obsession with vanity and the use of plastic surgery is bad and can have devastating effects. Ideas I have considered are that the club closes down so she loses her job anyway, young pubescent girls are introduced to replace her, a new younger stripper takes the limelight, melting at the end of the film or falling into the gutter.

I changed my story in parts as i feel i over complicated the arrival of the new stripper. She needs to be seen as an immediate threat so i took out the idea about the old stripper helping the new stripper. Also changed the surgery part to her performing it on herself.

Storyline

An ageing stripper is happy and content with her job as the only dancer in the club she works in

Young hot stripper starts working at club

Feels she is being replaced by younger model

The battle to be top dog starts

Tries to improve body to compete with younger girl

Performs surgery on herself to ‘improve’ body.

Now looks inhuman and grotesque

Rejected by audience.

more storyboard images:

I found that characters that are evil tend to be drawn with more angular pointy features such as Jafar in Aladdin and Cruella DeVill in 101 Dalmations. I will incorporate this with my new young stripper to reflect her nasty personality.





On more aesthetically complex characters, lines are drawn for wrinkles around the eyes, forehead and mouth, but I would like to keep my aesthetic simple so the amount of detail can be kept to a minimum, but will still try and incorporate these aspects. I like Disney’s simple use of under eye bags to age characters, which I think I will use for my character. Lines drawn from the nose to mouth are also a common feature, which I may use also.

I need to develop my character more. Saggy boobs were a must and i like accentuated leg shapes. She needs to be still curvy to suggest a once stunning figure, but she has let herself go and time has taking its toll.

I like the style of Beryl Cook. Her illustrations of largely built girls, wearing short skirts and bright red lipstick, with a simple body shape are suitable for the character I want to create.

I some intial design ideas to get me started on creating my characters.

I wanted my characters to have a clear difference between the two and so i tried some ideas to make them visually contrasting .

‘Girls night out’ by Joanna Quinn has a simple design of a female character that is ageing. Characters are vibrant and believable. Obviously I am not aiming for her level of quality and detail as this is not plausible in time frame, but I do admire her work. The image of Beryl relates to my character as she is similar age, and both have ageing bodies. The colour palette is minimal with mainly primary colours.

Geraldine is good film and is also relevant because it features the female figure. Very simple aesthetic but works well with animation style. The story is completely told through images, no dialogue only sound effects. The bold use of colour fits in perfectly with comedic feel of the film.

Here are my first lot of storyboard shots.

These pictures of strip clubs/ bars have really bold coloured lighting and i have noticed a theme with a palette of cool colours that include blues/purples/reds/pinks that i will incorporate into my aesthetic.

I started looking at some backgrounds in books and found some really nice examples. I want my backgrounds to be simple as the focus needs to be on my character. I found a few images which had just spotlights in the background and this would definitely work for my film.

I love the texture used in this image, i will try and incorporate some textures in my backgrounds as i feel they give more depth to the images.

The following image is from the book Dream Worlds, which is full of Disney artwork at pre-production stage. I particularly love this image for its simplicity and the use of colour to dramatic effect. I will definitely use this to help with my own backgrounds.

Storyline

An ageing stripper is happy and content with her job as the only dancer in the club she works in

Young hot stripper starts working at club, she is very nervous

Old girl helps the young to get over the fears.

New girl is really good, old stripper feels she is being replaced by younger model

The battle to be top dog starts

Tries to improve body to compete with younger girl

Goes to have plastic surgery to ‘improve’ body.

Now looks inhuman and grotesque

Rejected by audience.

I visited London to view the exteriors of sex clubs to give me ideas for my animation. I photographed the outside of a few clubs in Soho to get some ideas for a typical strip club sleazy. I particularly like the neon lit signs which make the club look alluring but dubious. I want to use the bright neon lighting for the inside of the clubs as well.

The majority of women have a complex about their own body; we all have something we don’t like about ourselves. Comparing your body to another woman’s is second nature to us and there is definitely competitiveness among women to look the best. This is where my idea about bringing in my second character for Loretta to compete/compare against came from. Loretta is now a woman competing for her stage and her audience.

The idea of competition with the new girl will work well in the animation but I don’t want to concentrate too much on the new girl; if I develop her character too much it will take up too much footage time and I want the focus to be on my main character.

Just managed to pin down my concept and premise for my film:

Concept: Chasing shallow dreams will not make you happy

Premise: Ageing stripper tries to recapture her youth and beauty through drastic measures

I looked for images of strippers for influences. I really like the strong contrasts in highlights to shadow and the purple, pink and red colours create a strong palette.

After speaking to Nick, I realised that for my character I would need to look at the seedier side of life. My options that work best for my film idea are pornography, prostitution and working at a stripclub. Theses professions for my main character would work as they all strongly rely on looks. I decided to go for the least seedy option by going with the stripper idea. I realised it would suit my story best if the stripper was older; she’s put on weight, her body is starting to sag, wrinkles have set in and her youth is slipping away. I thought that as the stripper is past her prime, she would give into the pressures of changing her body more easily as she feels she needs to regain her youthful looks. This idea is more body orientated and held more interest for me than any of my other ideas.

I looked again at what my character could be and came up with some ideas for places and jobs which relate to the body/looking good.

I thought about using a celebrity for my character who could be a young girl making it in Hollywood, exposed by publicity, and being scrutinised by the world along with peer pressure she is pushed into having plastic surgery. However, I decided the idea did not focus on the body enough, so I had to give the one up.

I also discussed the idea of my character being a female life guard with Nick but it became clear that this did not fit in with the idea of plastic surgery and would not work so I considered other professions where the body is looked at or is vital to the job. So, at a bit of a dead end at the moment...

My character idea is a young woman who feels she don’t fit in. She believes she is not attractive and is self-conscious about her body.

I pretty much immediately thought of having a female character for my film as the female body has a lot more visual potential in animation with this topic. The change in appearance with plastic surgery would be more dramatic than with a male body. Also, plastic surgery is something more frequently undertaken by women than men as the pressure to look good is greater on women. There is also the fact that I would also find it easier to relate to a female character and therefore could make the character more believable.

I brainstormed some ideas to help me visualise my character more clearly.

I found some examples what can happen when cosmetic surgery goes wrong.

I would like my story to be a commentary on the obsession with beauty in today’s society. I have always had an interest in the distorted views of beauty in the modern world and this is a very topical issue that I would like to explore in my animation. Modern society has a fear of ageing and as women get older they ‘lose their looks’ and become disposable and irrelevant, are traded in for younger models and sometimes resort to plastic surgery to try and get back their youthful looks. This has been happening for a long time, whether it be men trading in their spouses for younger women or dropped from a media job for being’ too old’ e.g. Moira Stewart, the newsreader and Arlene Stewart, judge in ‘Strictly come dancing’, who were both sacked for this reason.
The idea is not just about what men think about women, but what they ‘should’ look like according to magazines and the rest of the media. The desire to look ‘young and fresh’, free of cellulite, slim but with boobs and hips and wrinkle free can for some women become obsessive.

After struggling to come up with an idea for my film that I liked, I started thinking about the modern obsession with plastic surgery. It is everywhere at the moment; articles in magazines analysing whether celebrities have had surgery or not, media coverage on surgeries that have gone wrong, advertising on TV and the web and the number of normal people having procedures has risen dramatically.
I liked the idea of showing the after effects of surgery gone wrong in my film and conveying a message rather than just producing a humorous short. I also thought the visual aspect of a characters body changing would work well and be suited to the medium of animation.
I brainstormed some ideas to help me visually my ideas more clearly: