Film Review - Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Three weeks ago we watched the film Dancer in the Dark (2000), directed and written by Lars von Trier, in our postmodern lecture series. Firstly I have to say although it was a depressing film, I kind of didn't mind it. It is a musical starring the singer Bjork, who is known for creating unconventional music.



The film is about a young single mother immigrant in America called Selma Jezkova, who is working long hours to save up enough money to pay for her son to have an operation to preserve his sight. Their family has a history of eye sight deteriorating quickly over time, that eventually leaves you blind. She herself was going blind. Over time she has earned almost enough money, working in a factory by day and extra work at night, both requiring good eyesight. It all goes down hill when she looses her sight and her job and her money stolen by someone considered to be a friend. This leads to a struggle, which causes the accidental death of the thief.
The story is cruel in the way those certain events lead to a choice between saving her sons sight or else her being sentenced to death. When the music played, it is like we were seeing a daydream of what she was thinking and experienceing. It is her way of escaping all the troubles of the real world. Even when facing death she picks up a beat in the marching to make music and to forget the problems and worries ahead.

It is an unexpected setting for a musical. The main point to get from this film is that where a conventional musical is bold and theatrical, the setting in this film was gritty and with murky, with dull tones of colour, which make it feel more realistic. There is extreme contrast when music is introduced into the film, which doesn't appear for the first half hour or so, when things start to go wrong for Selma. The music naturally still has it's effect of feeling relaxed, comfortable and safe. This almost feels inappropriate for the film because you know that you shouldn't be feeling that way when so many bad things are happening. Of course this wasn't a bad movie mistake, but actually all intentional to create a postmodern depressing film.

Character Design - The Last Post - At 4 AM in the Morning

First of all I'm posting these last few sketches I did for the character bible.

Some failed attempts at Turnarounds


As you can see, I struggled with the side view.

Some Reasonable Turnarounds




Now here is the final Bible, uploaded in sequence.































I'm bringing a disc this morning to the crit with two PDFs. One is the character bible and the other is my blog. Well, I'm done for this evening. I mean morning. See you all at the crit.

Character Design - Characters to be Revealed...

...on Thursday. Sorry you'll have to wait a bit longer!

But here are some silhouettes.



I really need to concentrate on getting those turnarounds finished! That's tomorrows plan.
The only other things to do is to colour some of the props and to possibly draw more poses for the characters.

Character Design - Week 10 - The Final Week

It's the beginning of the final week!

I've gone over some of the hero poses from the last post. They now have the complete character drawn over the skeletons.



I've had to make some slight alterations to the uniform, so he can have his arms properly posed without any armour getting in the way. I've also drawn him without a cape. This, like the villains collar, is an optional item which is worn on special occasions. You will see the cape in the colour version of the character.






I'm going to list the things I'm aiming to get done for the character bible as a minimum!
If I find myself with extra time I will of course add more stuff. Likely to be more drawings!

________________________________________
In no particular order:


Front, side and back views of all three characters. Preferably in black and white line art, but if time is short, then left in sketch form.

Three different poses of all three characters, for a total of nine drawings in sketch form.

One of the above poses for each character in full colour.

Facial expressions for each character in sketch form.

Props of each character in sketch form. One of each prop in full colour (preferably).

A short synopsis of the cartoon. (very short - Probably what I will say at the final crit)

A full, slightly lengthy, synopsis of the cartoon. (lots more detail)

Character profiles for all three characters.

All of the completed weekly tasks.

________________________________________

All of that will be put into the character bible with a front cover and specially designed pages. (although nothing too fancy)

The character bible, as a PDF, and the blog posts related to character design, as a PDF, all put onto a CD.
I can also post the pages in sequence on the blog (like we've done before) just to make sure.

Now have I missed anything? I hope not.

Character Design - End of Week 9 Updates

When both projects briefed nine weeks back, a lot more time was spent on the Narrative project in the beginning. It's only fair that I spend more time now on the Character Design project.

I have here two days (Thursday and Friday) worth of sketching. Shown in chronological order. It took quite some time to scan and colour correct, but it's worth it as some drawings (the one's which I regard as final drawings) may be featured in the bible, and it makes the blog look better!

Most of the drawings are the poses for the three characters. However there are some drawings on the props.



Notice I've changed the sidekicks armor. Having the original chest plate which went around his shoulders was looking very flat and 2D. Also some of his poses (like the one below with an arm in the air) were physically impossible.






Notice that the poses for the hero never go into more detail than a skeleton. That's because it takes so many attempts to get the pose right. For the character bible I will trace over the best poses with the actual character.

Annoyingly the hero's feet missed the scanner! Not to worry though as this is the final pose of him shooting an energy disc, so I will be tracing over the it (with feet!) to get the final picture.




I don't know whether you'd noticed, but in these next few drawings of the villain, she isn't wearing the collar. I consider these poses to be 'attacking' poses. A collar would only get in the way. Remember she only likes to dress for the occasion!

The pose which I've attempted to re draw below is how she uses her staff to freeze people under her control. She hits it against the ground in a rage.



One last thing to note is that if you enlarge the pictures you may see little ticks and crosses. They are my initial thoughts on whether I think it is possibly a good drawing or bad drawing. I would usually scribble out the really bad drawings completely, but since using a new clicky pencil with expensive lead, (which I now find much better to draw with) I have realised that I can't afford to waste it!
Well that's a slight exaggeration as I don't scribble out many drawings at all now, but I used to!

A Flock of Pixels.