Building of the monster's lair frame

For the interior I wanted a cold cave type atmosphere and look, the walls would be rock like and there would be these sharp iceberg looking rocks going around the main space (To allow hiding spaces for the monster). The main colours would be black to give the feel of darkness and evil, purple for a magical mysterious feel and blue to give a cold feel. 

I will show more of the concept later, below is how the build went. 

I used a 9mm sheet of MDF and cut it down using a jigsaw. Below shows it put together using braces (using braces allowed me to take certain walls of for different camera angels and easily re-attach). Below you can see the interior was much bigger than the actual shed, i wanted the illusion of transporting to a new world (so if someone the monster didnt want came in, it would be a shed), this was the Alice in Wonderland inspiration.

I used mod roc for the walls, scrunching it to give the effect i wanted. I then gave it two coats of matt black wall paint (which i luckily had spare from 3 years earlier after painting my room) and then sprinkled blue and purple glitter on (I gave it another coat later on and added more glitter).

 

For the door i used MDF again which i cut to shape and used small hinges so it could be opened. I gave the door a different sort of shape to add to the feeling of being in a new weird distorted world. 

Building of the shed

Below is the building of the shed, It was the first thing i starting to make for the set. I remember how it felt good to finally get started on the build after months of designing and planning. I used balsa wood for the shed and the process went very well other than running out of wood and being delayed for a while until i got more.

For the door, i bought doll house hinges which were 1:12 scale and used a thick bit of balsa wood for the door. The little screws which came with the hinges weren't very good, some not even fitting in the hinge's holes so i improvised using pins as i knew they would be painted anyway. The swing of the door was stiff but that was perfect as the door was going to have to open during filming and that allowed me to control the movement easily. For the window i just used a clear plastic which i cut out then scratched up a bit to age it.

First Character Designs

After lots of sketches and experimenting i had three designs i liked.

Below is the young boy, i just wanted a standard average looking boy that can be relateable to the audience.

With the monster, i wanted a crazy looking monster, inspired by characters like the 'pale male' in Pans Labyrinth. Other character inspirations were by Illustrators like Gris Grimly and Alex Pardee

I had two designs i liked which i then (like the boy) edited on Photoshop. i was fairly certain on the monster mainly being purple but i did the other one a green shade just to make sure i was very certain on this. I wanted a manic, gangly look which would leave the oppotunity for strange movements possible to do in stop motion. The Purple was my favourite and at the time the look i would have for my monster.

My story inspiration

The original idea for my stop motion was a 4-5 minute story inspired mainly by Alice in Wonderland, a young character spots something and goes to see where it went and transports to a new world. It was also inspired by the film Big Fish in the way an older character telling a younger character a story from his youth which the younger character is unsure about the how the true the story is.

The basic concept was a Granpa telling his Grandson about the time he lost his eye after he visited the shed, This makes the boy curious as to whether Granpa is just telling tall tales or the truth so he decides to visit the shed to see whats in there. I was torn as to whether to make it that the Granpa had misunderstood the monster and the monster was nice or it was actually mean.

I started looking at more German fairy tales and came across Stuwwelpeter (which i had not read since i was much younger) which is a German childrens book with ten rhymed stories which have bad consequences for the child involved. I also took inspiration from Tim Burton's 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy' which is also a book of poems with quite dark endings but done in a humorous way.

We were recommended by our tutor Lizzie Oxby to do an animation of about 90 seconds max so i knew i would do the scene where the boy goes to visit the shed so i just decided to adapt this to make this the story as i wanted to do a complete film.

I then worte my own poem (which i will post in the near future) inspired by these two books which at the time i thought i would have narrated over the top of the animation.

My first blog

Welcome to my blog, this is my first blog ever so this should be fun and I hope you enjoy.


Der Blickfang is my third year studio project. A stop-motion animation inspired by old German fairy tales and poems (such as Struwwelpeter). I will be adding pictures of the process in the very near future.