The Ultimate Creations of Helenasia

Sketch of the Day 05-01-10 to 09-01-10

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:46:00 GMT

Here follow Sketches from the 5th to the 9th of January!

Quote of the day: "Oh god, I just want him to bite...my face..." (Sofie Graham)

And because the last pic was Sofie's fantasy, I thought we would balance it out with her worst nightmare...

Like seriously all day people have been ranting about the snow, tubelines have been delayed, some even shut down, and honestly its stupid. There was 3 cm of snow this morning, which is nothing, but it took me 1 hour to get to work, normally it takes me 15 min. Gay. Overreacting tube lines...
I get to work, and half the office didnt make it in, although surprisingly people from the furthest side of London DID make it...
Then at about 3pm everyone starts leaving when the xmas snow starts.

A. Its only snow.
B. Unnecessary mass hysteria (I got home very quickly and easily at the normal time)
C. WTF is up with the snow. Xmas is over. Begone vile snowage, you mess up my strut.

And congrats to Craig on his new camera!

Am moving to Pandora.

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Sketch of the Day 03-01-10

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:19:00 GMT

Kinda lazy today...:)

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Sketch of the Day 02-01-10

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:39:00 GMT

In the early days of the New Year, the gyms of the world are flooded with people eager to "improve themselves" and "become a new person"...

Unfortunately these resolutions are often shortlived and badly thought out...

I started the New Year by freezing my gym membership as of February...I just won't have time.

This person... on the other hand was so determined to start off her new life in the gym that she forgot to bring her gym clothes. She was actually walking around the gym like this, with half her gravity stricken booty on display.

Honey....no...those are not shorts for public...

but Kudos for the gym enthusiasm!

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Meet RobZ

h.simm@helenasia.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:58:00 GMT

Meet Rob! He will change over the next month or so, new eyes, new hair etc...Aiming to finish the puppets by the end of November, the sets by the end of December and...shoot in January and February!

Wish me luck, its going to be intense what with work as well:P

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Hello from London!

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:24:00 GMT

The summer disappeared completely. I cannot believe that we are already in October and I have barely touched the animation.
I have to say in my defense that I have been working fulltime since July, for Disney Interactive Studios and it is awesome... Completely different than I had imagined. It is strange, I do know that I am learning something there, but I suppose I won't see it myself until I complete a new piece of work and then look back on my work years from now...
After struggling again and again to visualize my script properly, I decided last week to completely rewrite the story, and structure it more traditionally.
It makes a great deal more sense now and I feel like I can move forward with the storyboard, and animatic.
Am in the process of arranging the music for the animation, I decided to remove all dialogue and use just ambient music. I might add in some vocals...but am just not too sure.
I just want to make sure the music does not sound too raw, but also not too processed. I want it to have a tight urban groove to it, but at the same time to convey the terrifying prospect of living forever. A tall order isn't it...

The puppets and set are on standby now, am reluctant to take over my room with puppetmaking madness until the storyboards, audio and animatic are finalised. No point in making my only refuge a rubbish tip just yet...
I need to make a new schedule. I plan to animate in January around the birth of my niece (my sister's second child). Have already arranged to take 2 weeks off work, 1 of which I will be in Iceland for.
If I plan well, I should easily be able to animate in just a few weeks. Just have to get all my shots in order.
Then editing should be a breeze.

In addition, I have moved on from watching zombie films to playing zombie games. I am terrible at Left4Dead, but am rather enjoying DeadSpace.
Yay for the undead..

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DISNEY MAN!

h.simm@helenasia.com — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:37:00 GMT

Right it has been ages since I wrote, I know...

But well to be honest, there just has not been time!
Over the past couple of months SO much has happened and so much work has been completed! Am actually astonished at the amount that has been completed to be honest:D

Research:

I have watched a ridiculous number of zombie films for my research, and this has indeed given me an insight into how George Romero's zombie sort of took over the whole zombie genre.
Zombies were not always these slow shuffling, braincraving cretins. Oh no, the original zombies were born of voodoo!
There is a great number of ancient stories about the undead, dating right back to Jesus. Lets be honest here, he was one of the first zombies wasn't he?
Back from the dead after 3 days?
So I delved into the world of Romero to begin with, watching films such as Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead (old and new version), Diary of the Dead, and Night of the Living Dead.
Then I moved on to 28 Days Later, and 28 Weeks Later, Resident Evil and other viral zombie films before moving on to the alternative zombie films.
And this is where I struck gold...
First I watched a film called American Zombie, which is a mockumentary/horror/drama about two filmmakers (one successful and the other not) who decide to document the existence of zombies in modern society.
Most of the zombies are just ordinary folks trying to get by, but they have a darker side to them. They are intelligent and very human, but they do have a darker side that only seems to appear once a year at a festival called "LIVE DEAD". In the end the film crew get themselves into serious trouble both from hassling the undead, and also from delving a little too deep into the whole zombie lifestyle.

The other amazing film that I watched is German, called "Otto, or Up with Dead People".
It is a strange and rather surreal film about a young man, in his early 20s, who stumbles around thinking he is dead. We never really discover if he is dead or not, but a couple of filmmakers decide to make a documentary about him nonetheless. They seem to think he is just troubled, but think it is rather amusing that Otto thinks he is a zombie. So of course they decide to milk it for all its worth, and make an arty film.
Otto really just seems to be a troubled homosexual young man, who ended up in a mental institute after a bad breakup, and now wanders the streets, homeless and lost...
The story is really heartwarming, and the cinematography is just beautiful.

These two films really got me started, and it was only then that I realised just how much material has been written on the subject of zombies. One can understand the charm of such supernatural beings like vampires, since they have that whole charm factor to them, very sensual beings.
Zombies are on the other hand, very simple and uncomplicated beings. Maybe that is their charm?

After watching all these zombie films and reading all these articles on the uncanny, as well as an amazing collection of short stories "The Living Dead", it has started to get to me.
FInally now I am starting to dream about zombies... yeah and they are not good dreams..
I am also starting to notice little things around me constantly that would fit nicely into my zombie's world.
In a health and supplement shop I saw these pills with big letters "BRAINS". They were supplements to support healthy brain activity, but then again, who is to say they aren't perfect for a zombie? The modern alternative to grabbing brains? Buy them in pill form.
Also being in Wales, I have of course noticed the beer that goes by the name "Brains". I find it rather ironic that the substance that has the reputation for turning men into mindless stumbling idiots should choose this name.

The Film:

I had been struggling a little with the film, trying to decide whether to shoot from script or just film spontaneous footage, as is done in Creature Comforts.
After a meeting with production designer Julia Bracegirdle, it all seemed to just come together.
Instead of filming the whole thing in a studio, which is a rather archaic approach to dating videos, would the zombie not be more likely in this day and age to just upload a video to "YouTube"?
So instead of the film being a strict dating video, it is now more of a video blog. A video blog by a zombie who is looking for love.
Now of course this has led to a few more struggles with script vs. improvisation.
In the end what I decided to do was interview my actor, using a list of questions, guiding the discussion towards zombie orientated subjects and then ALSO film the actor reading the script.
I was able to obtain some amazing moments during the interview, but when filming the script reading, I ran into trouble.
Mainly because my actor, was reading. And not acting.

Now, I somehow managed to get myself into an internship at Disney Interactive Studios in London for a year, visualizing game concepts. Yep, basically I am in my dreamjob;)
Because of this, I am switching to part time on my course. This means that instead of having only one term to finish my final film, I now have a year.
This is a huge relief especially since now I am able to give the actor more time to learn the script by heart, before I attempt to film him again.
I am confident in his abilities, and I just think his voice has such an amazing character and likability that I do not want to replace him.
He brings a certain comedic vibe to the character without losing the sadness beneath. Keeping a brave face.
i will film a couple of other actors, but I hope to not have to use them.
So because of all that, the animatic is still on standby.

Another benefit to having more time to make the film is that now I will have more time to build the puppets.
I am currently almost finished with the puppet for the female. She is in the film for about 5 seconds, screams and thats it. But...while making her I am also practising for making the main character, who will have to be far more mobile and detailed.

Am really glad I do not have to rush this process.
As far as set design goes, I have been gathering various little bits and pieces that would be perfect for the zombie's room, since that will be the main set.
There will be a couple of clips filmed outside (where he is sitting on the bench looking lonely) and also the scene with the dog, as well as a scene in his bathroom where we get a chance to see him looking in the cupboard and stitching himself up after a long rough day.
Basically we get to see what a zombie keeps in his medicine cabinet: sewing kit, superglue, plumbers tape, industry strength deodorant...etc.

Now somehow when coloring the zombie in Photoshop he has become ginger... I really do not know how that happened, but it does seem to suit him, and it also makes him a little more...irrationally repellent. The kinda guy you love to hate lol...
I know I am being a little gingerist here...but...yes well.

(Retrieves foot from throat and continues).
All in all the process is going well. I have started to test some animation footage with the eyes superimposed on top, and yes mobility of the puppets is a real issue, especially around the neck joints. The one I have made already just does not move the way a human moves, making it hard to follow the reference footage exactly and creating far more work in the motion tracking stage. Oh and yes the hair I so painstakingly sewed for the female will have to be replaced with solid hair, since every time I move her, the hair moves too. Not good...

Ideally I would like to build a professional armature for both the characters, but as of now my budget is depleted, am hoping to be able to apply for a bursary to fund the rest of this production. Especially before I begin to build the sets...
Setbuilding is going to have to wait until July, when I move to London. I just hope to god I don't end up living in a shoebox...

Well i think that is pretty much everything...for now at least!
I promise to update more often from now on, and tell you about Disney!

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More Puppetry!

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:11:00 GMT

Uploaded some more pics into the puppet album!

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Love Bits and Ramblings!

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:55:00 GMT

1. Technicalities
Lately I have been having a couple new ideas for my film.
The first of which was the idea of merely interviewing some interesting and quirky people I know in order to get some quirky answers that would then possibly fit in with the Zombie character and then use a visual approach only to inform the audience that he is actually a Zombie, rather than to script out a rather formal and strict dialogue which then might not be as easily performed by my actors.
The character could even end up as a Frankenstein monster or vampire. The important element to the character is the sympathetic monster.
Next up is to weed through the potential hours of interviews to find those little gold nuggets that work with my concept.

Then I will be filming various people I know lipsyncing and miming to the chosen snippets of the interviews, in order to get some interesting gestures. This is how Creature Comforts was made, and I really like this approach. I think it will bring more life to the character and also give me a little more to think about when compositing the eyes and the character together.

2. Xenophobia
Initially it was all about the character's body falling apart around him and how he wishes he could find a girl that isn't so picky, who doesn't mind a bit of DIY. All this because his main motivation is loneliness. He is the ultimate paradox, a zombie with a brain, and therefore there is no real place for him in society. He can't find any friends amongst his own kind and he can't find any amongst "normal" people.
In a way this addresses the common zombie theme of xenophobia.
In most zombie films for example Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead etc. the themes are xenophobia (fear of foreigners and people who are different) and also consumerism.

I wanted to convey his loneliness and isolation from the world around him, and how he realises that to live forever alone would be endless torture. This, along with a few puns about how he uses endless amounts of industry strength deo and his limbs keep falling off, was to be the main idea.

3. Alex Becomes Alexis?
But then I began to wonder what would happen if the main character was female?
What would her main concerns be? Thinking of the idea in terms of gender brought out even more interesting ideas.
Most women fear aging because they lose their beauty which is to them the source of their power. Death Becomes Her is an awesome film about intelligent zombie women fighting to maintain their looks...forever...at any cost!
For men, their source of power is their virility, their masculinity. So in researching the female side of aging concerns, it reminded me of some additional motivations for a male zombie.
He would of course be terrified of losing his strength and his masculinity which is to most men the source of their power. This correlates with professional athletes growing older.
One of the men that I had intended to interview and test as an actor, is an athlete who has had countless injuries. This is something that I can bring into the interview questions. Another side effect of being a zombie is the whole rotting flesh thing. Well I know a few jocks, and one thing they have in common is sport shoes that should be burned.

4. Avoided Like the Plague
Another interesting idea could be to explore how people react to the terminally ill, especially when the diseases are viewed as self-inflicted. Films like Philadelphia where a gay man is dying of AIDS, but because people are disgusted by the fact that he's gay, they blame him for his predicament, and have almost no sympathy.
This ties back in with the sympathetic monster. The horrible creature that you pity so much but you would never be able to be in the same room with it without losing your lunch.
Frankenstein, The Elephant Man, it all brings you back to the freak show.
Images that came into my head regarding that concept were a huge monster trying to hold onto the person it cares about, but ends up crushing them as they shriek in horror and pain. Almost like King Kong, if he had been a little less gentle.
Another image was of a newborn baby...born with serious birth defects, hideous to look at but reaching out to its mother with the same need of any other child, but the mother shrinks away in revulsion, her natural mothering instincts overcome by disgust at the outer appearance. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has this strong image in the beginning, but then the child in question becomes Brad Pitt. Alex the Zombie will only become more and more disgusting.

5. Heroin Chic
Then I wondered how he would fit into society if he had been passably attractive before death. After death, he would have become thinner and thinner and possibly passed for heroin chic. Then again he would have terrible skin...

6. Addictions
Finally that brought me around to addictions. Zombies have an addiction, a mindless craving for human flesh...traditionally for brains.
If I were to interview women, I could interview them not only about love, fear of ending up alone and watching their bodies deteriorate around them, but also about addictions, such as chocolate.
I could interview them about their cravings and desires. About passions that are unhealthy. Or, if they were smokers, how they gave up smoking.
This could tie in with my zombie not eating brains. How did the zombie stop? How did he/she feel after stopping?
And finally of course, I can ask the interviewees about how they fight the mainstream, if they do. What makes them different than everyone else, and why do they want to be different? What makes them unique and not just part of the (zombie) herd?

7. Interview Topics

Sports Injuries and smelly feet
Obstacles in love
Obstacles in dating
What are they looking for in a partner?
Why do they want a partner? Loneliness?
Isolation?
Addictions
Cravings
Giving up bad habits.
Pet Peeves
How are they unique?
How do they feel about aging? About losing their beauty? About losing their strength?

8. In the End?
If I was to make a trailer for the film I would initially set up shots portraying Alex as evil and zombiefied, but then show those shots to be completely innocent. A little bit of juxtaposition to spice things up! He could be throwing silhouetted objects that resemble limbs into a blender and bits of red splash out...but then the kitchen light switches on and it is revealed that the contents of the blender are vegetables...and the red splashes were just juice.

I also thought it might be fun to add in a couple of scenes where a female zombie is stuffing her face with brains and possibly use some dialogue about cravings...

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Puppetry!

h.simm@helenasia.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:22:00 GMT

Hey yall, had an amazing workshop on Wednesday with Jody Meredith, all about creating armatures and stopmotion puppets!

Check out the rest of the pics here!

Oh and yeah I have been checkin out some links on youtube,
so check these out!

This is an amazing stopmotion breakdancing battle between Batman and the Joker and hey, its even interactive!

Couple of videos from Madame Tutli Putli, the making of... Amazing animation and some interesting composition techniques which I am gonna test out.

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Page One Completedish...

h.simm@helenasia.com — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:18:00 GMT

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Reference Shots

h.simm@helenasia.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:55:00 GMT

So yeah I did mention taking pictures in Graveyards, and I have added them into my image gallery so you can check them out here!

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Revision Ramblings

h.simm@helenasia.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:54:00 GMT

After the Alan Gilbey workshop I realized that in fact my animation only has two acts. It includes the setup and the build up, but no resolution.
We introduce our character and his dilemma but in no way do we offer a resolution, unless the fact that he is on a dating show in the first place is his resolution.
I suppose we could have the 3 acts as follows:
1. Introduce our character and his problem.
2. Explore his troubles in love (dog scene and girl scene)
3. End up back where we started, with him on the dating show.
It is not a very satisfactory resolution, is there something more that could be done, or is this merely to be an exercise in character development?

Second issue is, can the whole film be created without words? What visual stimuli can we use to convey his loneliness and the hopelessness of him situation? What if the whole thing had him talking, but instead of hearing him talking, we hear a song.
So it would be a music video. The music would of course have to set the correct mood for the story, but what do we need to hear him say, if anything?
Think Kenna’s music video BLISS with the small being working away at his invention.

Rewrite script again and again until it works.

Lets explore our characters a little better.

Alan/Alex?:
Alan is 27 years old. It’s been about 9 years since he became a zombie, but in no way is this definitive of his personality.
He is an avid music lover, the kind of guy who loves Coldplay, Athlete, alternative music etc. He wears obscure t-shirts with obscure band names. His hair is a little shaggy and honestly he never worried too much about fitting in, but he does shop at Topshop…just to be on the safe side. His jeans are neither baggy nor skinny, but they are rather fashionable and he washes them at least every 2 weeks.
Converse shoes are the only label item he buys, and he loves them to pieces, almost as much as his Vans.
He’s a good son, studied hard in university, wanted to be a musician but ended up studying literature. Good thing too since writing is something he can still do even as a zombie. Now he handles all his writing submissions online.
He grew up in the outskirts of a large English city, likes the countryside, but also likes reaching town quickly so he can hit the nightlife which he used to rather enjoy, but lately it hasn’t been the same at all.

Possibly have him dressed in a blackish over washed t-shirt with a rather emo broken heart on it. His jeans are rather skinnyish and also black. If possible have him wearing converse. But his hair is NOT emo. Its scraggly though and missing in patches. Little bits of skin are peeling off his face as if no longer glued to the bones.
He isn’t so good-looking, not ugly, but maybe his nose is a bit large for his face, and his mouth a bit small.

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Animated Exeter

h.simm@helenasia.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:51:00 GMT

Its amazing how a little bit of sunshine can cheer a person up. My weekend in Exeter turned out to be one of the best things I could have done for myself. And to think, I wasn’t even going to go!
The week before had its shares of ups and downs, some major downs and some pretty major ups and damn there were some mad moments in between, but I have to say, all in all I feel so much more optimistic.
Saturday morning I boarded the train to Exeter and armed with my backpack and an overpriced breakfast roll and coffee I spent the ride typing up my script for my final project.
I arrived on time and with the first draft done, and walked the 5 minutes to my bed and breakfast, the Telstar, where I checked in easily and quickly.
10 minutes later I was sat in my room comfortably revising the script, getting myself ready for the Alan Gilbey scriptwriting class.
After having a quick walk around Exeter city center I discovered a chip shop and stuffed my face with some damn awesome chips, while waiting for the class to start at the Exeter Phoenix.
My first impression of Mr Gilbey was rather funny. He was standing and talking to the television screen…or rather to the animated dinosaur onscreen.
He was basically pulling a Windsor McKay. McKay is credited for creating the first real animated character. Things had been animated before, but never had a character had such depth and personality.
Nice start to the scriptwriting class, I would say, although I thought he was a bit loony.
Then he tells us, this is not a sit down and listen workshop, this is an ACTIVE workshop and mentally I groaned.
I am kinda shy when it comes to strangers and…to be honest, jumping around doing exercises for 3 hours was not my idea of a good Saturday. But then again, beats the crap out of sitting for 3 hours… I probably would have fallen asleep!
Then the exercises started and I swear to god, for the next 3 hours I learned SO MUCH. Yes the exercises were a bit silly, but they did exactly what they were supposed to: They loosened us all up and got us thinking!
I enjoyed the day so much!
I got so many new ideas and insights into character development and scriptwriting that I could barely type fast enough.
And then after the class Gilbey and I sat down in the café and discussed what’s going on with animation today and damn, he was just so nice!
In fact everyone at the workshop was damn nice, I swapped a few business cards with people and of course Mr Gilbey and then on my way out I discovered that one of my classmates that day is the creator of StopMotion Pro, which is one of the biggest stopmotion animation softwares on the market. The dude is Australian and I swear I thought he was an animator. In no way did he fit my idea of a programmer or software developer, but that’s exactly what he does.
Unfortunately they don’t do Mac software, but regardless I got his card, and gave him mine and damn what amazing contacts right there!!!
I was blown away after the first day and already so so glad I had come.
That evening I sat in my b&b room and just chilled, thinking about all the things I had learned and trying to make some sense of it all.
Pretty good Valentines Day to be honest!
This morning I woke up freakishly early and had an amazing free English Breakfast before heading off to Exeter and shot some pics of graveyards and stuff for reference.
Then I showed up at the life drawing class for animators, hosted by an Aardman person, and DAMN. Our model was a dancer!!!!
We had this girl dancing in front of us for 2 hours holding the most beautiful poses while we frantically sketched our arms off…
I hadn’t taken a life drawing class in about..8 years and it felt awesome… I could feel everything I had learned coming back to me.
I really enjoyed that.
After the class the dancer came up to see my drawings and I promised her some copies of course, good thing I had brought my camera, it gave me a chance to photograph all my drawings before they got smudged from being rolled up and carried back to Newport. Yes people, I was using CHARCOAL! ME! Lol…

Finally there was a comic book expo next door. I was in heaven. I bought 3 comics and I cannot wait to get home and read them and study the artwork. Yeah no I don’t collect comics…I read them and look at the artwork ☺
Am on my way home now, on the train with a smile on my face and a twinkle in my eye.
Life is good, no its great. Thank god I let go.

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Character design

h.simm@helenasia.com — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:10:00 GMT

Meet Alex, our friendly neighbourhood zombie. Version 2.0

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Life Drawing

h.simm@helenasia.com — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:56:00 GMT

So I was lucky enough to go to Animated Exeter this weekend and took an amazing scriptwriting class and also a life drawing class!!! We had a dancer!!! It was just incredible...

I just uploaded the pics from the life drawing, the rest of the stuff will follow soon:). Take a look here:)

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