Initial Group Discussions

The first decision to make was which story we were going to use. We're all into 'darker' tales, so a cautionary tale was a must, and after looking through the book, "The Story of Cruel Frederick" was by far the best for dark imagery. Tearing off the wings of flies and throwing kittens down the stairs, there's so much to animate with. The story belongs to a collection writtien by Heinrich Hoffmann called "Struwwelpeter" (written in 1845). Each ryhming tales ends in a disastrous way, teaching morals in the most exageratted way possible; including a boy who sucked his thumb too much and eventually had them cut off.

"The Story of Cruel Frederick" tells the tale of a boy who terrorised and tortured both animals and humans until he is bitten by his dog - who later goes on to live a lavish life, eating wonderful food.

Despite the dark doings of Frederick and the events that follow, the actions themselves are all quite comical - including the dog, Tray, feasting at a table. This lead to the next group decision, genre.

Film Genre: Black Comedy.

The next two decisions of period and place were vital to begin researching and designing in relevance to those aspects. It felt right to set the place in Germany due to its German origin and with period, we wanted a modern day depiction; somewhere ranging between early 2000's and now. With genre, period and place set, we began to gather some reference material for style.

Collectively, we put together a selection of animations that would inspire and influence our own outcome. The general feeling is to have long, jittery movements, shiny, gross surfaces and a sense of discomfort placed in the viewer. Below you can see a few examples of these.

Along with some initial image references and moodboards:

From here we were ready to start discussing character design, set design and the storyboarding. I've separated these into 3 separate blog entries showing the progression from initial moodboarding to the final designs in 2D format.