Lurk - Music and Sound

   I have had the pleasure of working again with Luke Tingle on this project, and seeing that he was just as enthusiastic as I was about working on something horror related, he immediately jumped on board. While I had told him about this even before summer break had begun, there really was nothing to worry about as Luke had been incredibly fast in getting together the sound clips needed for it. It only took him less than two days to edit the sound and music in, making it tenfold better (Words cannot describe just how much better it looks now with the sound put in.

   A few discussions were held, but nothing that was particularly in-depth. We simply exchanged examples (Like those that I wrote about in my inspirations post) of what we had in mind before we settled for a style of music and sound that I would want for the cinematic.

   A separate sound bed has been done for Rosy's title sequence by her friend (As a precaution in case we can't send it over to Luke in time before submission for editing), but I'm sure it will all come nicely together. Seeing as her original piece has a duration of 30 seconds, Rosy will have to edit together a shorter version for my animation. And if I'm able to pass it onto Luke for editting, it really shouldn't take him all that long.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 3

   Very much like the motel room scene at the beginning, I took some time to add more details to this underground subway tunnel. The characters were of course drawn in more detail as well (Compared to the stick figures in the concept art). This just gave me the opportunity to include Sister Diawara and Father Alex in another scene (Funny that his face isn't shown once again, however).

   It was from here that I tried to decide what other key scenes I should include within such a short span of time. I reluctantly wounded up dropping the soldier encounter and exploration scene in the end to at least include one scene with a monster in it (The static montage at the beginning doesn't necessarily count). I had hoped to include more, but once again was short on time (This was also another monster design I need to draw up clearly for my concept art book, most of the other monsters didn't seem like the shrieking sort and so I had to quickly design up another one).

   The last scene I wanted to keep was of Jessie's mother as she is staring at her (Or perhaps, at you) from across her seat in the train carriage. She appeared too sweet in the original drawing that I used for the animatic, and so aside from fixing her pose a little, I had to fix up her face a little. I am a little saddened that some of her beauty was taken away in this new version, but I think a creepiness factor was far more important for this scene (And that bloody looking shading on her cardigan was completely unintentional).

Resketching her pose.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 2

   This was a scene that stuck with me even during the early days of Lurk, and seeing as I couldn't fully animate them, I had to make their poses stand out (Strong poses, right?) as much as possible, which was a huge challenge. While Father Alex was a toughie to draw simply because of my rusty drawing skills, Sister Diawara was the bigger challenge. 

   I have long since characterised her as an eccentrically calm character as compared to everybody else, and so I had the toughest time figuring out what pose to give her without actually making her out of character (Not that anyone would know what her character was like... EXCEPT FOR ME). When I get around to animating this scene, I'm definitely going to video tape some references for it as well.

  The background itself was a heavily altered photo that I took of my friends' creepy basement (And I mean creepy, I seriously wish I could have used more of the photos I took of that place for this project).

   Another scene that I had to scrapp would have introduced the next key character to the series. Seemingly your stereotypical soldier and practically the only one competent to defend themself against such creatures, this soldier encounters Jessie in 3/4 ways of the plot. While the original design had been a male soldier named Peter, I found myself growing more interested in designing a female solder, which I will discuss more about in the character design post. But, as you can see, I thought I could have hidden his or her face for the time being for this scene, before of course excluding it from the cinematic.

   And here was the bit from the animatic that I had attempted to animate.

Lurk - Working on the Cinematic 1

Original Concept Art

   For the first scene, I didn't make all that many changes to it based on the animatic from the previous post, I just cleaned up and redrew a few details on the television. After wasting my time trying to remember how to use After Effects (When you are rushing, it's obvious that you can refamiliarise yourself or experiment as much as you would like), I ended up designing a seperate static montage, erased out the white screen, and placed the television later on top of it.

   I practically did the same for motel room design, cleaning up and adding in some more details insead of leaving it as a blurry charcoal-looking mess (And so I had the chance to mess around with some more brushes other than the usual hard brush that I have grown so accustom to using). I definitely could have added in more details (Such as perhaps making it rain outside the window), but I know I had to hurry on and work on other scenes and so left it as it is. Getting the lighting was the trickest part for this scene, as I was never necessarily sure how much of the area would be lit up by the television, or whether I should just make some creative decisions by showing more of the room than I should.

   In my rush, I simply drew a still image of Jessie once the camera pans out to show her outside of the room. As suggested however, I ended up redrawing her and attempted to add a tiny bit of animation by making her e--

OH SWEET LORD.

   To finish up the overall look of this scene, I messed around with a few texture and layer options. Now, while I am discussing these scenes in order, that doesn't mean that I actually did them in order (HAH!). Before I went back to finish up this scene, I experimented with a texture overlay for another scene and found myself enjoying the color and feel it actually gave to it (Which I will show in the next post) and so decided to do the same for this scene along with a few others. 
   
   The scene that would have followed after that was a close up of her as she shifts about restlessly as she attempts to call her father on her phone. Aside from lack of time, a fully animated scene would once again not go with the rest of the cinematic's simplified movements (Which you will see more of in the next post). I would of course love to animate this scene one day and put together a proper animation as I had originally intended, but for now...

   This scene was also scrapped for the same reasons, I had spent days figuring out her pose (You can't imagine the awful (In more ways than one) stuff I find when googling 'unconcious girl', also, I had no idea you can fall unconcious with your eyes open) as she lays on the ground before deciding to scrap it all completely. While I had attempted to keep the scene where she would come to and look at around for a moment... you probably know what became of that too...

   I know that she looks pretty different here as compared to the previous scene, hopefully the similar pose still clued you in that they are actually the same person. I was happy with the slightly 3D-ish look the wall has.

I still really do like how my sketch for this turned out, though.
So again, one day... ONE DAY.

   

   And this was the new version, a still illustration with some flickering lighting and a shadow passing over her... It doesn't look too bad, I guess.. It was also here that I began to realise how difficult it was to make her poses appear natural with such large scarf/poncho wrapped around her top half. Future considerations is that I will have to take reference photos if when I finally get the chance to come back to this concept.

Getting it Together

   Progress had been incredibly slow over the past few months (Aside from the amount of research I had gathered particularly for my dissertation. But of course, all of that research can be applied to my academic poster and academic poster as well), and it was only near the end of Christmas break did I attempt to get my shiz together. Aside from giving my room a decent clean up, I decided to move my work area back to the front of the windows, which I hadn't wanted to intially due to issues with the internet connection and the fact that someone smashed a ginormous tree branch against my window once upon a time... But yeah, I needed more table space. 

   

   At the same time, I also printed out some concept art references and covered my windows up with them (I ran out of space on my noticeaboards, also, I really didn't want to keep turning my head to look at them). I was hoping that having a constant view of my inspirations would keep me... well, inspired.

   And before I get into what I have been doing for my practical, let's start off with this really rough animatic I did for when I had originally hope to make a fully animated piece (Who knows, maybe, just MAYBE I might be able to go back to it after I graduate... I mean, this was after all a concept from nearly 5-6 years back, so there is a chance that I will come back to it again):

   Alot, and I mean A LOT of changes has been made since this animatic, to meet the deadline for my music and sound designer as well as to show something for my friend who is working on a title sequence for it. I had to simplify a lot of things and chance it to a simpler piece of cinematic with fewer scenes... I believe I will be placing more focus on the concept art book from here on out by displaying more strong poses of the characters and atmospheric scenarios... but yeah, that's another thing to talk about for later on.

Lurk - Monster Designs

   Progress for my practical has been a little slow (Due to me falling ill for most of Christmas break), so chances are that I might be simplifying my animation and turning it into more of a 2D cinematic than a fully animated piece. So this will allow me to incorporate the concept art that I already have and simply animate it with the use of After Effects. While I initially hoped to get some fully animated scenes done as well, I am beginning to think that fully animated scenes and scenes with more basic motions will not go well with one another... I will worry about that later once I actually more work done for it.

   Rosy has already started on the title sequence, and so far it's looking pretty sweet. I should however pick up the pace and show a bit more work to my composer so that he will be given more time to work on the music and sound (Which is now all that much time left). Anyway, as the title pretty much says, here are some of the monster designs that I have done for the concept bible itself, obviously not all of them will be included within the animation, which gave me the opportunity to work on more detailed pieces to showcase within the book itself (Seeing as I have no need to worry about animating them all).

   I hope to give them all an unsettling sort of appearance, aside from the expected body horror, I have begun looking into some examples that take advantage of the Uncanny (An issue that could have been applied to the monsters in horror video games more often, when I think about it).