During
the summer of 2015, my creative juices were feeling like they were
atrophied, and I was looking for a new project to begin. There were
several avenues I could have chosen, and in fact, I wanted to begin a
different animation, but I ended up starting "The Music of Erich
Zann." I can't even really explain why I chose this over the
other projects that I want to complete, except to say that this
Lovecraft work has been sitting on my shelf for too long, I felt. So
I started.
Since
the layout of the animation was determined on those old papers for so
long, I decided to start with the sets. I also feel more confident as
a hard-body modeler, rather than as a character modeler. In fact, at
this stage, I had no idea where I would go with the characters, so I
decided to start on something that I did have an idea about.
There
are only two establishing shots in the short story that are exterior
scenes. Looking back, and later in the development, I questioned this
early set, and whether I would even include this exterior scene. But
I really wanted to create a nice exterior, so...
It
seemed to me that the original Lovecraft story is set in New Orleans,
or something like that. With that in mind, I probably should have
researched some New Orleans locales, and architecture, but I don't
think that I ever did. Instead I went for New Orleans' influences,
European cityscapes, like French and Italian cities and towns. I did
Google searches of streets in different cities, and went to work.
I
think the first thing I did was try to block out the scene. I did
this so that I would then know what I really needed to model in
detail to flesh out the set.
Looking
back at this, it is clear that this was an ambitious plan, but that
it would have been better served if I had first created a detailed
screenplay, and/or storyboard that would illustrate what I would need
to model for the scene. Many of the initial buildings planned here
did not get made, and even fewer that were made actually get seen in
the final piece.
(I didn't end up building the large cathedral and square, and I changed some of the buildings.)
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