I photoshopped a sky behind our house set just for fun. As you can see, I was too lazy to cut the tree out completely - use your imagination.

I thought it'd be fun to see a storyboard next to the actual set portrayed. Whee, fun.

HERE'S SOME MORE

These are the first ten storyboards of another scene, in which we see Cornelisz working on the painting.

NEW BOARDS

I drew some new storyboards; we rewrote the 'Anna-Maria and Lord William meet in the field scene' so new boards were needed for our animated storyboard. These aren't all of them, but you get the idea.

THE HELL PAINTING

I thought i'd show a few of our sources for our Hell Painting. First and foremost is a couple of works by Bruegel the Elder; 'Triumph over (sic) Death', and 'Mad Meg (sic)'. There's a whole lot of neat stuff in there. We also plan to rip off Gustav Dore's illustrations of 'The Divine Comedy' pretty extensively. You can see from the storyboard drawing that we've already been mugging him.

WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO

Mike and I have begun work on the 'animated storyboard'; not quite an actually animated storyboard, but a pre-making of the film. We're putting scanned storyboards into an .avi (movie) file, and editing it as we would the finished product. We'll then add narration, voices, sound effects, and temporary borrowed music. The addition of audio, even though its of a low-grade and temporary nature, is enormously helpful in showing us what our film will look like. Its very difficult to imagine how the story will flow from storyboards only. We'll also be doing a little bit of 'ghetto animation'; cutting out storyboard elements in photoshop, and then moving them around in our pre-movie via Adobe After Effects. So far, i've only seen one of first scenes with the 'pre-make' treatment (storyboards and a few sound effects), and the difference is huge. I was struck by how much we need to add a few shots/elements to stretch the scene out. It went by rather fast.

Unfortunately there's not much to show visually from this process, obviously. But, we are working again on a regular basis - there was a bit of a hiatus there that was getting discouraging. Mike and I are also hammering out what needs to be in our Hell painting.

CRAIG BOYKO

I have this friend-guy who is of the name of Craig, Boyko, etc. His most notable characteristic, besides near-heroic inner strength displayed in the overcoming of a glandular weight problem, is his real-good writery-ness. In fact, other smartguys who are smart and good have said that he is a all-roun smartguy. So, I sent him our screenplay so he could have a look, at his own suggestion. This is a bit of what he sent us back:

One final thought: On reading the story, I had this
idea that the true horror of the final scene is not
imagistic so much as contextual: In other words, a
woman burning in a carriage is not as hellish as the
whole story behind the woman, her identity, and the
identity of the painter, etc. Thus in a way the Hell
Screen story IS a kind of hell screen itself, I guess.
I thought it would be interesting to play on this idea
at the conclusion of the story, or in this case
screenplay. From Johannes' perspective then, what HE
would find especially hellish would not be Anna-Maria
in the carriage, but
Cornelisz-watching-Anna-Maria-in-the-carriage. And
particularly the look on Cornelisz's face, changing
perhaps from horrified to enthralled as he sees what
he will paint. Perhaps Johannes' narration could
conclude on something like, "This, it seemed to me,
was the one key image missing from The Hell Painting:
The Painter's face, as his daughter burned." Just a
thought.


This is a good point, and contains one of the central little kernels of the story. We may even use his idea (but we won't give him any of the money and cocaine and women that we get when we finish the movie).

BLOGS CAUSE CANCER

It seems likely that we'll be back on track soon. Michael 'Rhino Balls' Addison and I will be giving the screenplay a final tweak on Wednesday, after which we (i.e. me) will draw up some quick storyboards. These will be practical storyboards for our own use; no more elaborate 1/2-hour-each-to-draw storyboards. Those were fun, but they served more as concept sketches for sets than storyboards.

I've been getting annoyed lately at the lack of progress - mostly at myself. It becomes difficult to initiate work when you're out of the habit, too busy at work, too poor, etc. And, my partners are pretty useless with their hands - all they can do is go 'clicky-clicky-clicky' (keyboard typing noise) and flap their jaws.

Its also looking very likely that its going to be me doing all the animation; aquiring a partner who will want to work consistently with us for years just doesn't sound very likely.

Dave 'The Human Spagetti Squash' Sikma is going to be printing off some fancy pictures of our storyboards and set, which we will then include in a package, so's people gives us the money.

NEATO STUFF

I thought i'd connect some of the scenes mentioned in the screenplay with some storyboard panels (there are hundreds of these elaborate storyboards) so's you can see what we're envisioning.

SCENE 11: EXTERIOR PLACE OF THE BURNING, NIGHT

LORD WILLIAM
Cornelisz! Step forth! Tonight, to fulfill your wish, I will burn a carriage for you.

LORD WILLIAM
Look well, and do not flinch from what you see - look well, and perhaps you will glimpse hell itself.

In this scene, Lord William grants Cornelisz's innermost desire; a model for the image that has been obsessing him. Cornelisz is somewhat aware that the realiazation of his goal will mean severing his last tie with his humanity, i.e. his daughter. After that, a jive-talking slam-dunking monkey takes him on an eXtreme road trip, and teaches him the true meaning of Christmas.