The Visit - An Animated Tale Begins Production

Welcome to my production journal for The Visit. I am starting work on a short animated film based on an old folk tale called Cow Head. It's a rather dark, scary tale about a little girl who is cast aside by her family and must survive alone in the cold, dark forest. She meets a terrifying demon and must do what she can in order to survive. It's a deceptively simple tale that I think will make a powerful little movie. It won't be a funny movie, but it may have some touches of humor. I'll post more about the story later.

The picture you see here is the fourth test drawing I did while trying to find out how the main character looks. I am still working on her eyes. You can see that I'm trying to work in a slightly anime style with her. I'm not entirely certain that this is the way to go yet. I am using a Wacom pen tablet to draw her and the foreground trees directly into Adobe Flash 8.

In addition to this direct Flash drawing work, I am carrying around a little sketchbook that I use for practice. This is because I want to approach this movie with a freedom and ease that I have not so far been able to master. I am trying to do very fast sketches of people, objects and landscapes. When I say fast I mean really, really fast and scribbled and messy. I don't really care if they are good drawings or not. The only important thing is that my fingers make the pen leave a mark. As I practice this I will begin to move into another notebook and draw backgrounds, characters and shots for the movie. I'll photograph many of those and put them here. The idea is to get as much life and expression into each frame of the movie as I possibly can. The technique I use may change from week to week until I'm satisfied I've found the one I want. Feel free to say anything about this work you want in the comments. If there's something you can learn from following along, then I think I've certainly achieved something.

Here's what I mean by fast sketching for practice: