Aquarelltest in 3D
Animatic, ca. 6 minutes
To get a quick impression of the story and as an easy way to introduce the storyboard I very much recommend to see first the animatic above. This is a rough animation of camera tracking and how the space is rotating while the characters are moving into different rooms.
The clothing room; the little girl is getting grandma out of bed; Style: hand drawn with aquarelle backgrounds
Synopsis
The short film “Das Haus” is a hand drawn animation in classical style of about 6 minutes, drawn 24 frames per second with pencil and coloured in aquarelle. To create the 3D rotating space with permanent tracking camera the idea is to combine 2D drawn and coloured cell animation with 3D animation with hand coloured aquarelle mappings for the backgrounds.
The story centered around the main character the little girl, her grandma, the aunt and her mother happens exclusively in the "House", existing of 5 different rooms. You can understand the house as a box, which four sides define each a different room, coming to life due to the rotation of the box while the protagonists are entering the next rooms respectively climbing up the wall the box is turning. Plus a fifth room outside the box as the beginning of the story and the possible way out of the closed system at the end. Beside of the family of 4 women there are two pets in the house, a fish and a bird, helping the little girl till the end, escaping as the only survivors.
Little girl and her mother
The rooms are furnished quite minimal, there is only furniture needed for the plot. In the first room of the story the bathroom, there is a bathtub-shower, a washbasin and a mirror. As well there is a light switch connected to a light bulb in the next room, the bedroom. Underneath the light bulb there is a table with a flowerpot. On the back wall, the very same in every room is hanging a painting, which is rotating into every room when the box is turning, as it is hung on the center point of rotation and is the only thing affected by gravity. Besides on the right there is a bed with a small table on which is standing a goldfish glass. The next room of the story is a kind of closet or clothing room where the bed turns into a kind of wardrobe, as well there is an armchair and a big flower vase. In the next room of the box the living-room there is only a big mirror. The last room is the kitchen with a stove on top a pot of boiling water and a big kitchen cupboard.
Living-room with the little girl, her grandma, the mother, the bird and the mirror
The camera is tracking permanently the action. There will be no cut, one single track throughout the whole movie. The camera should be basically in close up very near to the action and the characters, but sometimes also in long shot. So the dynamics and the dramaturgy of the camera normally realized through editing should be created with slow and fast camera tracking, focusing the foreground or the background changes from horizontal tracking to vertical tilts and so on.
The aunt is coming to life due to a big flower vase and the picture on the wall behind. She is eating the hair of the grandma.
The grandma without hair and with hair looking into the mirror.