A Search for the Perfect Website Design

So for my portfolio class, I need to make a website...
My roomie, Jenna tells me, "Why don't you look at some tailor websites for inspiration?"
"Yes, Jenna! That's a great idea!" I go on google to look at some tailor websites and.... they all really stunk! There was only one I found that was really cool looking, it was called, "Tailor". It was neat and vintage looking and everything! But then I found out..... it was a restaurant... called Tailor...............
This is my conclusion after that night:

Parents....

Guess who! That's right, it's Taylor when he was a lad.
I know what your thinking.... what horrible people made him a crazed thumb-cutting tailor, huh? Well...

These two! Haha. I was having fun with my roommate the other day and we challenged each other to draw each others thesis character's parents. She said Kathryn's parents were too easy... this was fun though. Made me explore my Tailor character a bit more.

He never really wanted to be a crazy Tailor who cut thumbs off bad kids, all he wanted to be was a lumberjack! But coming from a long line of tailors:



Parents, never stunt your child's dreams...

The Characters

Hello Dearies!
I finally got everything nice and organized! Here are the characters of my new film! The top image was the first concept I ever drew of them. Designing characters is a tough and rigorous process. You must go through sketch after sketch after sketch. Nothing looks right the very first time. Or at least for me, hehe. Here's some process for the hero of our story, Kathryn and also our villian, the tailor.
Exploring Kathryn's Design
Some hair choices, I liked #5 (first one on second row) but it was too similar to the Tailor (pointy and edgy looking) they wanted her more round and heart shaped.

Exploring Taylor the Tailor's Design

Costume Design for Kathryn.

Costume Design for the Tailor, he dresses like such a gentleman!

Finalizing the dress design for our heroine!

Final Design for Kathryn

Final Design for the Tailor

Now, for these two at least, I had a set vision for what I wanted them to look like. But most of the time, I'll go even farther with concept sketches. I loved doing costume research for them though! BLISS.

Choosing the Style

I was never a big fan of the generic looking 3D computer animated movie.
I'm a huge fan of altering the norm, straying from the crowd, so I wanted my film to have a unique look to it. Here are some great inspirations for the set and finalized style of my film (note: these are from other films okay!)

The legendary Edward Gorey


The Wonderful Henry Selick




Dearest Mary Blair
(I kept heavy geometric shapes like this in my characters and environment.)



The Amazing Jamie Caliri
Originally I wanted my film to look like these, Cut Out Animation. Especially during a part in my Thesis when the Tailor comes out of the book. But due to some complications... I couldn't go through with it. Making this effect in MAYA is exceedingly simple though.


Yoriyos music video 'Pied Piper'. Again more inspiration for the cut out look. I'm hoping I can pay a small homage to the style somewhere in my Thesis.


And of course some Tim Burton in the Mix.

If I could, I'd put even more pictures in. But I don't blogger can handle it, haha! But you get the idea. As an extra note, my film is very contrasted. I have the Tailor and (instead of a little boy) a little girl. When we are with the little girl in the piece, everything is very desaturated, grey, and dull pastel colors. The world also looks very normal (the typical 3D environment). But when the tailor comes into the picture, everything turns bright, high constrasting colors, and very geometric landscape. Like a nightmare sequence you'd see in Disney's Fantasia.

Style is HIGHLY important when it comes to communicating things to your audience. Young animators and concept designers reading this out there, do pay attention, incorporate style in ALL of your pieces! :D It will make your film that much better!

The Inspiration

The Method behind the Madness.
Der Struwwelpeter, a German childrens book that is the inspiration for my film. Your probably wondering where I ran across such a thing. Well...

When I was a child, I distinctly remember my dad, aunts, and I going into the local German deli (because I'm half German) and I was looking for something to buy that wasn't overly sweet and chocolaty. Then I saw it, the book that would soon hold my thesis inside its pages.

The cover's horrifying! But it sparked my interest as a kid! I knabbed it off the shelf and showed my father, "I want THIS daddy!" And surprisingly, he remembered the book from when he was a child in Germany. So he bought the book for me.

Der Struwwelpeter is like something from out of a Tim Burton or Henry Selick film. All its tales are entertainingly twisted, ment to teach kids a lesson (like Aesops) only.... alittle more scary, though Aesops is pretty messed up too :\ Here's a website with pretty good translation of all the tales, just to give you a taste of what's in it: CLICK ME!

Anyhoo, out of all the tales, one had stuck with me since I first flipped through the books pages.
Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher or The Story of Little Thumb Sucker. It's about a little boy who is warned by his mother, not to suck his thumbs, or the tall tailor will come with his scissors and cut them off. You think it would end happily, but nope. The boy sucks his thumbs anyway and boom! Tailor comes, and in the end the boy has no thumbs. This was my favorite story in the whole book, probably because it was just so out there and the character of the Tailor was just interesting.

Eventually, I would present this tale to my Animation PreProduction class and it would be chosen to be my Thesis. But mine has a happy ending :) I never found the original ending fair.

And for obvious reasons...

Bad Habit

Hello All!
My name is Sandra P. and this is my Thesis promotion blog!
Yikes, too formal huh? How about this...
This is the "Making Of" Tale of the Tailor, a short film animated by me, Sandra P. and released by Ringling College of Art and Design.

Last year's senior show (class of 2009), I fell in love with so many pieces, and I wished the creators had... like an Art of, for their thesis either online on their sites or somewhere else. Just to see where it came from and how it developed over the years into the master piece it became in the end.

So, this blog is going to be all that I wished for, only for you. It'll include sketches, story development, and even storyboard and animatics, and eventually the final itself! JOY!

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoy!
Sandra