Perdido Street Station, is the book I finally chose and is a combination of science fiction and fantasy written by China Mieville. The reason I chose this book in particular, is because of the varied and interesting scenes that I can remake for the purpose of the animation. The book is set in various locations but the main city that is featured in the book called, 'New Crobuzon', is a place that I'm interested to try and portray based on the description of it in the book as well as the laboratory of the main character, Isaac, as I think the cluttered working environment would be an interesting set to try and build and portray the way I imagined it as I read the book.
The following is an excerpt from the book and is an example of the kind of description on various locations, the way it very viscerally describes the setting gave me a detailed idea of the kind of place it is and how I could possibly represent it within the limitations of the brief and with the resources and time I have.
'The river twists and turns to face the city. It looms suddenly, massive, stamped on the landscape. Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock hills, like bruise-blood. Its dirty towers glow. I am debased. I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers. It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt into the sky even now in the deep night. It is not the current which pulls us but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. Faint shouts, here and there the calls of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut. Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargoes from the water.'
The book itself is full of thorough and gripping descriptions like this, which makes it ideal for interpreting and using the descriptions to make a world and design the environments for the animation to take place. There are several places throughout the book that I am keen to include in some way, in terms of environments, and the characters are no less intriguing than the setting. The main characters of the story, of which there are many, include; Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a human scientist; Yagharek, a winged bird like humanoid and Lin, Isaac's girlfriend and sculptor. Overall the book is incredibly original in its ideas and following the story that takes place in the book really taps into your imagination, which is hopefully something I can portray in the animation through my ideas.
Based on the book, the dark themes it tackles and the complexity of the plot the audience for the story and consequently the title sequence I produce for the adaptation will be aimed at adults, or at least people aged sixteen or over. Due to the themes and premise of the story the animation style will be dark and gritty, reinforcing the idea of a much more adult orientated style in conjunction with the themes.
For this project, I really wanted to do something more ambitious than I've attempted previously, and over the months that we have been on the course so far, we have learnt an enormous amount of skills in various different areas, from software inductions to spending days in metal and wood workshops or making models in the ceramics rooms. So, for this project since to my knowledge it's the last big project before the end of the year I wanted to do something I haven't tried yet and bring together as much as the stuff I've learnt as possible. When the brief was first given to us, I had the idea to produce the titles for the book adaptation in a stop motion format. I thought it would be a challenge but also fun to produce sets for the animation, of two or three key scenes from the book using the workshop skills I learnt, I also think it would be interesting to try my hand at set design and the planning and organisation that's involved in such a process. To get a grasp of the kind of things I need to consider and also see if it's doable, the first I thing I did initially was speak to Roger, who is the tutor that gave us the wood workshop induction. I gave him a brief overview of my idea and asked him when attempting something like this since I was very new to the process what I should consider with things like cost and materials etc. He was extremely helpful and optimistic about my idea to build the sets and also gave me a lot to think about. Firstly, will the set be fixed or will you be able to take it apart and remove sections of it, this could be useful for several reasons such as attaching or detaching other segments of set if the need arises, or even transporting it around if I needed to move it somewhere. Next, how will lights or cameras be attached to make any lighting arrangement I want possible, also to be able to shoot different camera angles, cameras could be fixed to the set or rigged in different ways, so this is something that will also have to be considered. Another important factor is props, when asked if I was going to buy miniatures from arts of dolls houses for example or make the props myself by hand I said I was going to do a combination of both, to make sure anything I want to use as a prop is available to me, and how I think it should be. The more obvious things that come to mind when thinking about the pre-production planning and overall design and making of the set is things like size and more importantly scale, as well as materials and overall cost. I would be making it with a very little budget so I am trying to be as economical as possible when it comes to time, money and overall design of the things I'm making. After I spoke to Roger I took the opportunity to speak to Mike about if there was anywhere in the building I could store my sets if everything went according to plan, since they could be a meter or more in length each and carrying them around by myself isn't a viable option. He told me that there is storage space in the building and specifically, they could be held in the stop motion room as long as none of the second or third year students work was in there and there was space, so that's one thing that I know I can do now if I manage to make the sets.
So overall, things to consider;
- Can it be disassembled
- Attaching cameras
- Attaching lighting
- Size
- Materials
- Cost
- Props
- Time
- Storage
- Design
From the book, there is a lot key scenes that could be used to represent the story and used in the title sequence. I will have to look into this further to make a final decision when I'm deeper into the planning stage but as of right now, the three settings within the story that I think are necessary at first glance, are; Isaacs laboratory which is where a lot of the story takes place, and not only that, where key moments in the story take place. Also, the city itself. I think it would be interesting, and create a good viewing experience to build a city scape that maybe one or two panning shots can be taken and incorporated into the title sequence to quickly set the scene and let the audience view the city for what it is. The reason I'm interested in pursuing this idea is for several reasons. Firstly, I want to challenge myself and on previous projects it has been the final animation that has brought my overall mark down, and I want to prove that I can produce good quality animations. I also want to utilise as many of the things I have learnt over the past few months and demonstrate how far I've come since the beginning of the course. The various inductions into different softwares such as After Effects and Dragon Frame can really be put to use in this project as well as the workshop inductions and all of the tutorials on various aspects of animation. Even some of the speakers from places like Bradford Animation Festival from companies such as Laika produced huge amounts of insight into various process of the production phase that I can use to my advantage in the project. Finally, this module will be a huge learning curve, I expect it to be challenging but rewarding in the sense that I will learn a lot and hopefully be able to produce something I'm happy with.
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