Final Study Task - Research

When my laptop starts getting slow while I'm animating on Photoshop, it means it's time I do something else… so here are a few works I used for research and inspiration in my short little animation.

Junji Ito

One of my biggest inspirations when it comes to the horror and macabre (Aside from Silent Hill), the amazing amount of details used to enhance each gruesome black and white image was always astounding to me, there was never ever need to color the gore. While I am trying my best to simplify the art style I am using for this animation (Especially by already using a limited palette), I am still trying to pick out little details to enhance the more gorey (STOP AUTOCORRECTING THIS WORD TO COREY UGH) frames, though it will sadly nowhere be as horrifying as the images above.

Sachsen

Sachsen is also another fantastic artist I knew for awhile now, he is pretty well known in the community for his cutesy faced girls and unbelievably detailed mutants and creatures, most of the time combine these two creatively together. In this case, I was just trying to get some ideas in the mutation design and see if there is any way to improve it further, while still keeping in mind that it needs to stay fairly simple due to time constraints.

The Thing

You are probably figuring out by now on what I am aiming for, and so you know it makes sense that I am also getting some references from "The Thing". It is surprisingly hard finding good images from the original film, but I remembered how amazingly creative and terrifying their designs were, I even chanced upon some pretty freaky comic and novel covers in the past, so I kept them in mind while working on bits such as the eye gore and the head removal, you know, the cringe-worthy bits…

 

I was looking through Ace Attorney sprites for animation references, especially since they have some pretty amazing animations while still also managing to use a limited number of frames for them... particularly for when my character is laughing. It is a huge relief that not too much motion is required in portraying that action, only a few body parts really need to be focused on instead when animating the laughter motion.

Still I am having a little trouble when she is laughing with her head down, it seems a little stiff, but when I remove a few frames, it wounds up being far too fast for my liking. I will go back to that area after I finish the other frames that aren't causing me as much trouble...