They'll tell you I'm insane- Animation Shorts

ESCAPE FROM HELLVIEW by Hadas Brandes- Animation inspiration.

The short is the story of a little boy who draws a door to a magical kingdom on the wall of his room one night, after his mother has gone to sleep. The things that happen there—including a vague, almost menacing, parental figure who won’t stay in one place long enough for the boy to reach its comforting embrace, sends the little boy screaming back through the door after a desperate escape from terrifying pursuers. But even back safely in his room, there’s little light or comfort at the film’s end.

CROOKED ROT by David Firth- Animation Inspiration

If Escape from Hellview plays like a distillation of childhood fears, animator David Firth’s Crooked Rot seems like nothing less than the bluntly, brutally adult version. There are images on display here that are as difficult to describe as they are to watch, and it will come as no surprise that a lot of David’s work deals with mental illness and depression, though he says he’s not trying to upset people.

I should have slept with one eye open at night..

Don't go into the basement..
'Horror tells us that our belief in security is delusional,
and that monsters are all around us'.
Joshua Hoffine

Hoffine's most controversial image.
The wolf is often seen as a 'sexual predator'

Classic 'Monster under the bed' scene.
It is believed that Hoffine used his own children in this scene.
She could only perform this scene in short periods of time...

...But insisted non of them had nightmares after participating.

Hoffine blurs the lines between the fairy-tales he tells his children and horror stories, creating ghoulishly creepy images that are completely relatable.

Tim Burton- Original Film Sketches

A Nightmare before Christmas.
Original sketches for Animation

A Nightmare before Christmas.
Fully Animated

Edward Scissorhands.
Original Sketch.

Burton ft Animation puppets.

There's a monster in all of us.

A Nightmare before Christmas
Creepy Sketches.

Identity Initial Ideas.

When initially given this title as a brief, many themes came to mind mainly to do with sexuality and how its explored but then I began to research deeper into the psychological side of 'Identity' and found a much more interesting and potentially more satisfying subject to base my project on.

Dreams and Nightmares affect us both when we are young through to when we grow older, having both a physical and mental impact on how we live our lives. Nightmares especially, determine our deepest fears and bring them to life. These fears remain with us from childhood and this is what I would like to explore in this project; the way childhood fears shape our identity and control our fears as an adult.

I will begin with looking at the work of famous animator, producer and director, Tim Burton as he has created some of the most iconic pieces of animation films in the history of cinema, whether it be full feature length animations such as A Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride, or shorter, vintage films like Vincent, which happens to be one of Burton's first pieces of animated work. (1982). Burton is re nound for his horror based imagery and sketched characters, giving his films a ghoulish, nightmarish tone to them. The tone I want to recreate in my work.

Through studying the work of Tim Burton, I hope to achieve the same effect that his work had on me the first time I watched 'A Nightmare before Christmas'. I felt strangely intrigued by the dynamics of the characters and the gracefulness of the characters within the narrative but at the same time slightly creeped out by the character's appearances and long, spindly bodies. Although suitable for children, I believe that these images could relate back to the fears children have as the characters are not normal although friendly. My animation, I hope, will mirror the work of Burton's previous work to some extent but I would like to portray a normal, adult, working life with added features of what people remember being their childhood fears.

Joshua Hoffine is an inspiring photographer who goes by the name of 'The Horror Photographer' and photographs that of which children are primarily scared of. His work is truly terrifying and completely relatable to everyone who views it as it depicts the most cliched fears but in a way that they still remain terrifying,

It is his work that I will attempt to recreate in animation stop motion form, using the idea of cliched childhood fears and capture the moment 'before the monster attacks'.

Ghostly and paranormal inspirations will derive from the work of both Francesca Woodman and Duane Michals who focus on the art of motion blur and long exposures in order to create the ghostly tone in their images. Also adding to the effect, the use of black and white toning and grey scale shading is used and with high contrast being added, the end results are truly striking and deeply chilling. The idea of working within a black and white tonal range will be a potential idea due to the effect it does have on a piece of work. I may even play around with swapping between colour and black and white to give that distorted, disjointed effect, again relating entirely to the idea of nightmares.