Attached are a series of preliminary character roughs, based on designs seen in the animatic or on the board. First is the Hacker. Board designs suggested an alternative vision of the character who’s a little less tidy than that seen in the animatic, and that design seemed to fit more fluidly with the character as described in the script. We’ve drawn up a pair of headshots based on those designs but using the house style, and we’ll pursue one or the other (or a different option) based on feedback. In addition, we explore a couple of variations on his glasses, through which he interfaces with the computer. Click for larger:
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Next we check out a few variations on the labsuits worn by the technicians attending to the captive. The first is a fairly straight take on the design as posted in the boards, the others offer variations in helmet design and external apparatus.
Switching the focus to a single cut, we did a rough pass on the soldier who agitates the captive into action. The armor is simple but follows the lines of modern suits, with a focus on covering the torso and groin. It’s been suggested that we leave the helmet off this particular character, both to emphasize his character and heighten the horror of what happens next.
The rifle is a basic bullpup design based loosely on the lines of a Kel-Tec RFB and then adding more modern, sculpted curves for the grips to reflect against the harder lines of the firing mechanism. The weapon is cocked by pulling the knob along the top of the barrel, not unlike sub-machineguns such as the Uzi or MP5.
The goggles we went with here are basic shooting goggles, but an alternative might be something more articulated and cybernetic (having the implants rip out along with everything else could notch up the eww factor another tick).
Once he’s made the mistake of agitating the captive, things get messy. Sounds will be 70% of what you see, but in addition to the twisting of limbs into interesting shapes, showing the secondary effects (such as suddenly pouring blood from the splits in the body out of the bottom of the ball of meat that used to be a man) effectively re-emphasize the horror of what’s taking place.
A new angle for the headscraping action emphasizes the observing scientists place in the scene. Even as silhouettes, they can react by body language, or they can not react at all… either way it says something about them as characters.
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Finally, once the soldier has been wrung out and given a shiny new haircut, we switch out to a low angle that places all three actors (the captive, the soldier, and the scientists as a group) into the frame and displays the mass of pulpy, chunky gore that’s been sprayed across the laboratory. After holding him in the air to squeeze out a bit more juice, he’s dropped into a floppy lump that barely resembles anything human now.
This is a one-day initial rough pass on elements from the animatic, board and script. With additional time and focus we’ll improve the level of detail and design.
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June 30th, 2010 at 12:41 am
1. Hacker Designs and iShades: I like all of it – the two character designs work and all three glasses designs could work. Both characters and the glasses designs could all be used in the series.
2. Doctor Suit Designs: I happen to still like the far left design. These guys never show their faces and they have flashes of being not entirely human. Eerily alien, all of them.
3. Soldier: looks amazing. Nice homage to Mignola in some of the stylings. Just fantastic.
4. Soldier Body Twist: extreme, I like it. Think it would be good to start the body twist fairly conservatively and end this way, as if he is slowly joint popped into a giant Stretch Armstrong. The rifle itself should be on a chest strap and not held loose.
5. HeadScraperSK1.gif: just gets better and better. There could be soldier or guard in the observation deck that retches! The Doctors and Scientist are pretty blase about the ordeal.
6. Splat_001 and 002: Great angle and goggle placement. 002 looks horrifically wet. I’m running out of superlatives.
It almost goes without saying, your character designer (Ben McSweeney ?) is doing a fantastic job. There are no criticisms here, only production comments.
It all looks great.