Backgroud/Set Design, and a tangent.

I'm going to be the first to admit out loud that I'm painfully lazy with my artwork too much of the time. Any look at the things I've drawn will reveal that much. The truth is that I enjoy color and light much more than I actually enjoy laying things out and making them interesting to look at, so it should come as no surprise that my usual tendency is to laze my way to that part.

This isn't me underselling myself or anything. My grandfather recently saw something that I had published in a school magazine (The Visual Opinion, for the SVA-savvy) and told me that I was underselling myself in my little autobiographical blurb. It surprised me that he had to say that, but it got me thinking a lot about how artists in general tend to present themselves. Naturally, we tend to be self critical and very self-conscious of our problem areas. It's easy for an artist to say to themselves 'It's all junk'.

I've always felt like honesty is the best policy with that sort of thing, and maybe part of the reason why I've yet to really figure out how to make a solid resume for jobs is that I haven't yet figured out the best way to effectively lie about myself. Or at least gloss over flaws or pull one of those "If I had to list any negative traits, it's that I work too hard and I'm a perfectionist" schticks.

But the other half of why I've shrunken away from constructing a good resume is that, like I said, I'm lazy. And backgrounds don't often enough make it into my artwork.

Especially not interiors.

Especially not interiors with interesting angles and perspective, because straight lines intimidate me for some reason. Maybe it's because I just prefer drawing 'organic' things more, like trees. And somehow it's easier for me to make depth with those sorts of things.

Regardless, I don't feel like I should puff myself up and have an 'I'm the best' attitude, because I'm far from it, and I really dislike it when people have that kind of inflated sense of themselves.

It's probably a balance between the two things. Confidence and modesty, I mean. It is important not to undersell yourself and start criticizing your own work when you show it to someone before they can even form their own opinions on it. Which I know some artists tend to do. Hell, it's exactly what I'm doing right now, as you're reading this very post. Kind of. But it's also important not to lie about your weapons, so to speak.

But I digress.

The next few posts I'm going to make are some basic background drawings/set designs. Starting first with...

...Su's Room.

She really likes bugs. And stars. When I was a kid, there was a friend I had who had a playroom in her attic/upstairs area that had a second room where there was a guest bed. I always thought the idea of attic bedrooms were awesome, so it only seemed fitting that Su should have one.

This is just a sketch, so I haven't decided yet on things like patterns, colors, and/or textures.

Character Designs

Su, the main character. An imaginative 6 year old. A lover of stars, rabbits, and bugs of all kinds, her room is full of toys that reflect her somewhat eccentric interests. Of all of these, her favorite is her blue stuffed cat plush, Bat Barf. She loves stories, but has a fear of the dark and of spiders. As long as she has her nightlight and her dreamcatcher, though, everything should be alright. Right?

Chelsea, Su's mom. The narrator of the story of the Shifty-Spider. She has a big collection of stories in an old book titled 'Tales from the Once-Then'.

Overall design and color choices not final.

The Shifty-Spider, a monster from an old story. He lives exclusively in the dark and old, forgotten places, looking to feed off of passing thoughts, dreams, ideas, and memories. When he encounters a living person, he will stalk them, then steal them away to feed from until they fade away to nothing. The more he is feared and the longer he is ignored, the stronger he becomes.

Imp, an unexpected visitor, and Bat Barf, Su's doll.

Music and Sound

All music for the film comes from Kevin MacLeod, who has one of the nicest collections of Royalty-Free music that I've found on the internet. He composes and arranges all of the tracks himself and makes them absolutely free to use for all kinds of projects.

The tracks that I'm going to use and sample from are Fairy Tale Waltz and Mysterioso March/Teeny Empty Urns.

All sound effects are going to be recorded manually.

As of right now, I don't have a voice actor for the film's narration.

"Let me tell you a story..."

A six year old girl goes on a rescue mission for her favorite doll during the middle of a power-out, but believes that she is being stalked by a spider-monster from her bedtime story.

This is the basic setup for my student film. I'm Kari Gallagher, an undergraduate Animation student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, and I'm about to go into my thesis year. I'm going to be using this blog to document the progress of the film along the way, mostly to let people I know know what I'm up to, and to remind them that I'm not dead. This blog also serves the function of having a motivation to keep working on my project, because I will feel like a jerk if I won't update.

So whether you're family reading this, or my thesis advisor, my friends, my classmates, my teachers, or just someone who stumbled here on happenstance, I hope you get to like what you see here.