Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Robber Bridegroom

 One of my current projects that I am getting together for my Graduation at the end of March is The story of "The Robber Bridegroom", which is a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. I am conceptualizing out a few of the key Layouts, as well as the four important characters within the story: The Miller, The Miller's Daughter, The Robber Bridegroom, and The old Woman that lives in the house that the Robber Bridegroom and his men use as a home base. I figure she is his elderly Mother who they use as a house slave.
  My hope is to have all of these conceptual drawing done, as well as, the Beat Boards for the story. For those of you who don't know, Beat Boards are Storyboards that cover the main idea of each scene/sequence.

Robber Bridegroom Synopsis:

A miller wished to marry his daughter off, and so when a rich suitor appeared, he betrothed her to him. One day the suitor complained that the daughter never visited him, told her that he lived in the forest, and overrode her reluctance by telling her he would leave a trail of ashes so she could find his home. She filled her pockets with peas and lentils and marked the trail with them as she followed the ashes.
They led her to a dark and silent house. A bird in a cage called out to warn her that she entered a murderer's house. An old woman in a cellar kitchen told her that the people there would kill and eat her unless the old woman protected her and hid her behind a barrel. A band of robbers arrived with a young woman, and they killed her and prepared to eat her. When one chopped off a finger to get at the golden ring on it, the finger and ring flew through the air and landed in the bodice of the hiding woman. The old woman discouraged them from searching, because the finger nor the ring were likely to run away: they'd find it in the morning.
The old woman drugged the robbers' wine. As soon as they fell asleep, the two living women fled. Wind had blown the ashes away, but the peas and lentils had sprung up into seedlings: the two followed the path of plants and reached the young woman's home.
When the wedding day arrived and the guests were telling stories, the young woman said that she would tell a dream she had had, and told of her visit to the robbers' den, her bridegroom punctuating it with "My darling, you only dreamed this." -- or the robber punctuating with exclamations that it was not so in the Mr. Fox variant -- until she produced the finger of the dead girl and showed it to the company.
The robber bridegroom and all his band were put to death.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Cleaver Fever

Recently, I started to animate for a video game that is in production at the Portland AI. The first character they gave me to animate was a Spider and my first thought was, "oh, no. A multiple legged creature, dear me." But it turned out easier than I had originally thought it would. Here is the walk and bite animation i did for the game.
    
Spider Walk

Spider Bite