This page documents one half of this brief, which is the film-based half; to see the larger, print-based section, go to my Through The Pale Door project page.
This film is still, clearly, unfinished; for the time being, I'm unsure whether or not it will be taken to completion. However, this was my proposition for my 4th (Honours) year film, which I had been intending to carry out as a solo project. I'm sort of talking over joining in with a larger group project at the moment, working mainly on character designs with a small amount of 2D animation on the side, which would let me concentrate more upon the illustration angle of my work, which I have come to find I much prefer. In any case, the specified chunk of production work for this hand-in was to include an animatic, 10-30 seconds of test animation (out of which I completed about 16, compiled into something of a leica reel here with the animatic), full story-boards and dope sheets, and a production bible, consisting of scripts, character designs, background and scenery work, sample frames, and information on all of these.
As you might recognise, the story itself was inspired by the music playing in the animatic: "Through The Pale Door", by one of my favourite bands, Faith And The Muse. It is intended to be fairly narrative, however without needing any dialogue or narration, and set fairly close to the beat of the music.
This storyline was created through a mix of an old comic I wrote and drew about 5 or 6 years ago (specifically the new world appearing through a mysterious door, standing on its own and otherwise undetectable to those that aren't looking for it), together with a cast of characters and general atmosphere that have sprung up while listening to this song and others on the same album.
There are many references to the band within this, however they are hopefully quite subtle: Elyria was the name of an earlier album, and the character of William is vaguely inspired by one band member, William Faith (rather obvious name-sake!), from earlier on in the band's history.
(Hopefully in the final production, this should all be fairly self-explanatory, but as this was made from storyboards rather than keyframes, not every action is shown (as well as there being some blank spots), so it might be fairly difficult to follow. Just to verfiy: between the times of - seconds, the walls are to be falling down and disappearing around her.)
For the final animation, should I decide for definite to complete this in 4th year, I will either be writing to the band's management to ask for permission to use either this song or (preferrably) an instrumental version of it, or alternatively, if this isn't possible, ask my brother to record a similar piece of music, with the same tone, beat and timing to this.
