The way an idea usually starts off is from a character or a storyline. If it’s a character it then moves onto the look and the personality. I also consider the direction of the character to the audience, whether they should be loved, or loathed. One character I would like to work with is a character like Data, Vulcans and the Borg from Star Trek, neither of them understand the concept of human emotions yet it’s only the Borg that are seen as ‘evil’ yet they all share the same personality trait. Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment series that debuted in 1966 and was created by Gene Roddenberry, it ran for three series and followed the interstellar travels of Captain James. T. Kirk and the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise. In 1987 Star Trek: The Next Generation was created by the same person and existed around 100 years after the original series. In 1993 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine entered the star trek universe followed by Star Trek: Voyager which debuted in 1995 and last of all Star Trek: Enterprise arrived in 2001, recently Star Trek has been revived into the mainstream by the arrival of the 2009 movie Star Trek, which features the main characters from the original show but portrayed by a new cast.
In one episode Data, a robot, was asked whether he ‘missed’ people, of which he replies by saying that his subroutines become used to the presence of certain persons and their absence can affect him.
Another character with a similar personality trait is the ‘psychopathic patient’ that appeared in one episode of House MD, which is an American medical drama that debuted in 2004. Rather than not understanding emotions she just doesn’t feel anything at all, like Data, but the doctors see her as being cruel and ‘evil’ as she is married but only for the purpose of financial stability, she makes quite logical assumptions about some of the main characters that make them feel vulnerable yet isn’t supposed to be loved by the audience, even though the Vulcan species from Star Trek are also a logical race, but they dampen their emotions so they can take the most logical route through any situation, which sometimes leads to dark consequences. Through this you start to question the morals of humanity, is it so wrong to not let your emotions take control of you? If the needs of your instincts are met, does it matter whether you make a ‘true’ connection with another person?
A personality trait I love to use is the ‘love, hate relationship’ trait, as seen in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which is an American animated TV series that is shown on cartoon networks late night ‘Adult Swim’ which is an adult-oriented network aimed at a 14-18+ audience. The main characters in Aqua Teen Hunger Force are Shake, a sharp tongued milkshake, Frylock a floating box of fries, who is clearly the smartest out of the main characters, Meatwad a piece of meat that isn’t suitable for human consumption whom has a child-like personality. I am more interested in the relationship between Shake and Meatwad because Shake tends to bully Meatwad but they share the ‘love, hate relationship trait’ Shake bullies Meatwad because he finds him annoying, stupid and generally a waste of space, but if Meatwad didn’t exist Shake would find himself without purpose as most of Shake’s time is spent pestering Meatwad. Also, because Meatwad has a child-like personality he doesn’t take anything Shake does to heart, he’ll be upset for a short amount of time and five minutes later he’s up to his shenanigans again.
I used this personality trait for the characters I created and then used in the Narrative Project. Frank the alcoholic bunny who is similar to Shake, and Bob the moldy marijuana cake who is similar to Meatwad. Rather than the audience be slightly on the fence about whether to like Frank or not due to him making patronizing comments to Bob, I gave Bob the personality trait of being quite innocent, but because of this he’s also naive about the world, spending most of his life in a fridge he doesn’t understand the outside world, yet he knows about the existence of Narnia, God and the ending song to the computer game Portal. Due to this he tends to make outrageous conclusions about who he is and also how the world works. He never had a father so he automatically assumes that he’s God because God never had a father as he was just ‘there’. Frank, being a mascot and anointed leader of a religion known as Fuzzyism he saves Bob because he believes he is God and doesn’t want his religion to exist without their leader, because of this, regardless of their different personality traits Frank dedicates his time to get Bob back to his religion which is followed by humorous consequences. Because Bob comes across as being quite confusing, talkative and annoying Frank tries to tolerate him but usually ends up insulting Bob. Though Bob always has quick come-backs to this as he seems to have endless ammo due to Frank being a baby pink, alcoholic, short and somewhat mistaken for being gay rabbit. The fact that his religion is called ‘Fuzzyism’ doesn’t help his case either.
I am interested in all types of media which include many authors, historical and contempory. I myself am interested and fascinated by demons, monsters and fear itself. Therefore authors that influence me follow in these footsteps.
My favourite author is Darren Shan an Irish author of horror and fantasy novels. What I love about his books is that the ending isn’t predictable, usually when I read books I can figure out that at some point a main character will die and possibly the ending of the story, then comes the long wait of finding out that I was actually right. With Darren Shan I end up being completely wrong about the storyline and that he’s gone so far in the opposite direction he’s gone round the world, visited every country, bought the t-shirt, built a new upgraded Death Star with a pet Dinosaur Terminator and bought a shark sleeping bag just to spite me.
Yeah...I want it.
I would like to create storylines that have the same effect to the target audience, pretty much anything could happen, it breaks the laws of how a story should be told but it works.
An author I have recently started reading is H.P.Lovecraft, who was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction who was born on 20th August 1890 and died March 15th 1937. He specifically looked into the psychological horror of never actually knowing who the ‘evil monster’ was. With Lovecraft he’s one of those authors who was decades out of his time-frame, when he was alive his work was relatively unheard-of, though now he is considered one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. I am intrigued at Lovecraft’s creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared universe that takes place in the fictional New England and is centered on the Great Old Ones, a fearsome assortment of ancient and powerful deities who came from outer space and once ruled earth. The most famous of these beings is Cthulhu who lays dormant in a submerged city, of which when he awakens he will wreak havoc on the earth, as well as that, if anyone ever saw what he looked like, they would immediately go insane, which personally, is something I’d take my chances with.
Enjoy this image of Cthulhu while you slowly decline into insanity...Stephen King, a contempory horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction writer, whom is another of my influences and has also been influenced by Lovecraft, wrote a story I’m curious to read about titled “Survivor Type”, which is about the diaries of a Doctor who, while smuggling heroin on a cruise ship ends up finding himself marooned on a tiny island with limited supplies and no food. His diary documents his day to day activities and become more and more disjointed and raving detailing his slow mental decay and eventual insanity due to starvation, isolation and drug use. Holding out for rescue he attempts to catch a bird but ends up breaking his ankle, he has to amputate his foot and then realizes he has to eat it to survive. He continues using his own limbs as a food source using the heroin as an anesthesia during the gruesome operations. His last diary entries which are hard to understand indicate that he has cut off and eaten everything below his waist, his ears and drools uncontrollably as he contemplates what part to eat next. The diary entries stop when he cuts off his left hand to eat.
This story reminds me of another of my influences, a story entitled “The Black Freighter” which I saw on the Ultimate Cut of the film Watchmen, I personally think the creators of this story were probably influenced by Stephen King's story. The story also involves a shipwreck, but this story involves a lone mariner surviving a shipwreck when his crew were attacked by ‘The Black Freighter’ a ship made entirely out of skeletons as well as having a crew made up of skeletons too. Worried that the ship is after his family he creates a make-shift raft using his dead comrades and makes his long journey back to his village to warn them, insanity has already started to set in since he left the desolate island as on the mast he has the head of his best friend tied to it and talks to it often, with it responding almost as if it were alive. Upon reaching the village in his sense of urgency he kills a couple believing them to be in league with the freighter and runs into his home killing his wife in front of his children, believing her to be a part of the skeleton crew from the freighter. When he realizes what he has done he quickly returns to the sea front to see The Black Freighter waiting, he then understands that it wasn’t coming to claim his town, but to claim him.
Both stories relate to human morals and how society is just an illusion we have created for ourselves to keep those morals in check, when in actual fact the most important thing to any human is surviving, and we will shed as many of our precious morals to achieve that goal in hope that we will stand a chance of surviving. Consider this: If society had no law against killing someone and nobody saw murder as being wrong, is it still wrong to take another persons life? Or is it because of the negative consequence to us taking another persons life that stops us from committing the ‘crime’ in the first place?
Therefore, if this illusion ever failed, humanity itself would be thrown into chaos.
I have created my own storyline based around this concept but it is still within the beginning stages. The story itself revolves around a husband and his wife finding themselves shipwrecked on an island followed by rape and cannibalism. I think the story would be best complimented if it was written as a book due to it already being quite graphic and detailed to the viewer, I also think the target audience would find it more traumatizing to read and have the images created in their mind than watch a piece of animation with the images laid out for them already.
And now a picture of a Puppy....by Puppy....I mean Comedians.Tommy Cooper, Lee Evans, Morcombe and Wise, Tim Minchin and Monty Python are amongst my favourite comedians, but comedians themselves don't actually influence me directly, I watch them mostly for entertainment purposes. Saying that, the work process they go through to produce their material I find is what influences me as the way they work is very similar to the same process I go through when creating lines for my characters. My work always includes some sort of humour within the storyline partially because I, myself find it hard to take serious situations seriously.
"I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral" - 'One Week' by Barenaked Ladies
Like comedians, I tend to get my ideas from real life experiences and then I exaggerate what happened and add on situations that would be more random and humourous even though it never happened or potentially doesn't make sense within reality.
Not many artists influence me in any aspect during the process of creating an animation, aside from one artist, Alex Pardee, whom I think has influenced me alot in the style of drawing I would like to reproduce, it helps that he's also a freelance artist. To me that shows that even though he essentially works 'under the radar' as he's relatively unknown in the mainstream he still succeeds in what he does. He designs album covers for several rock bands including; Aiden, The Used and In Flames. He also produces he's own artwork as well as having several comics. Included in this is the story entitled "Chadam" that was published on Myspace only as a short story telling of Chadam which was a character born from The Used's album 'Lies for the Liars'. The story now exists as a mini web series on Alex Pardee's website.
The style of drawing Alex Pardee has shows his influences of horror movies, graffiti, pop art and gangster rap. Also his time spent visiting a mental institution and being on medication for 15 years also plays a large influence. Due to his drawing style Alex Pardee has personified his characters and has given them the aura of being quite dark and sinister, but his choice of colours also make the characters quite beautiful, because of that you start to feel sympathetic and curious as to what the character is about. It makes you feel that at some point the characters were once loved, but were either disregarded, lost or forgotten about over time, and through that they have mutated into something horrible and terrifying.
Personally I find this adorable, I mean, look at those fangs...he'd look so cute when he's eating human flesh.I can't end this little insight into my influences without mentioning something that is directly related to Animation. Wierdly I'm more influenced by storylines than actual animations, this is because with Animators I find myself being inspired by them instead, and to me the most important thing is the storyline itself. I don't want to confine myself to sticking to just one piece of media, when I create a storyline I consider what type of media would work well, if I then decide animation is the route, it is then that I look into the different types of animation and what would suit the storyline best and get the strongest affect across to the viewer. I'm sure your asking yourself why am I not choosing to become a Director instead of an Animator. Well the reason is because I find Animation the technique itself fascinating, about how you can give life to inanimate objects and create links to the viewer through it. It also means I'm not confined to just this reality, I essentially become the God of the world I choose to create and I have control over what happens to the characters that live within that world. This is where Hayao Miyazaki, my main inspiration comes in. He's a Japanese film director, screenwriter and character designer of many popular animated movies and is also the co-founder of the animation production company Studio Ghibli.
Miyazaki directed and wrote Princess Mononoke and like Miyazaki I would like to do the same with my work, but also animate it myself too or at least have some input for my storyline and characters if I worked with other animators as a team. I would also like to either create or co-found my own production company so I would be able to have the freedom to create and bring to life my storylines to hopefully inspire a wide range of audiences.
And soon after that I'll take over the whole world...
PANDA ARMY....POSITION DELTA!
