At first, I wanted to avoid using my fears as I felt too difficult so I decided to focus on the song to discover and decide on my narrative. I experimented with the idea of a puppeteer over your life, because with the song Samson I had a constant reminder and feeling about cancer controlling your life and even being in a relationship with someone who has cancer your life disappears. So, I experimented with that idea, that you are controlled by this puppeteer and I used the idea of split frames and using repetition to show the monotonous nature of this.
Eventually I decided not to use it, because the result with too monotonous, and I decided to use my personal experiences to make better work, and I went back to my character design and worked out how much I wanted to use and how to make it in to a concise narrative.
After creating my monster, I had a comment from a fellow student about my character looking like a mermaid and because of my fears and sometimes it can feel like I am drowning, I thought the metaphor of water could be interesting to use. So I started developing my character, and I looked at what I wanted to keep from my monster and what I did not. I used these basic sketches to decide on this. In the end, I decided to keep the darkness and use the other ideas I had to work on the storyboard and the narrative instead of being part of the character.
When working on my storyboard I started with very loose small thumbnail sketches this meant I could work through a lot quickly and it retains the fluidness of the sketches and it avoids my final images becoming stiff. As I scanned them and then worked on the digitally to create the final draft for my storyboard.
I then used my thumbnail sketches to create 5 frame storyboard which also outlined the style and the movement I was going for. I then printed these 5 out and experimented with markers on them. I decided to use markers on my final storyboard, because I could only use dry materials and I normally use paint, so I knew I could still get tonal values with the markers because I could use the colourless blender to pick up colour from the marker and create lighter tones and I could get an affect near watercolours, because I knew that was an affect I wanted because watercolours suit underwater scenes so well. I then broke up the first frame I did into 3 and then I and added two more in-between frames. I then I printed all 9 off at the correct size and transferred them onto my final storyboard using a lightbox. To make sure I didn’t make a mistake I did some warmup exercises so I was relaxed and not worried, and like working with watercolours I built up the layers and tone slowly so I didn’t make a mistake it would be easier to correct.