Schwarzwaldt Research Bible Lauren J

8/2/2019 Schwarzwaldt Research Bible Lauren J

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Schwarz Waldt

h l k


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h l k

AUDIENCE.

The target audience for this feature lmis aimed at

children around the ages of 12+

The length of the feature lm is important. You dont want it too long so thatyour audience gets bored, However you dont want it too short that the audi-

ence feel unfulllled and want their money back.

The characters have to be captivating for the child, not too scary so that theydont want to watch it. But at the same time you dont to make the character

dull, or els the child wont grow a connection with it. Emotions, body languageand speech is vital, the child will grow attached to it were it be a bit intimidat-

ing or lovable.Needs to be captivating for the child at all times, look into humour in the form

of a childs mind.What style/concept is too babyish or too grown up for children?

What is too much of an adult conent?


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INFLUENCES

Secret of Kells.The artistic style shown through this lmis incredibly inuencial for me, The char-acters and background alone show strong

iconic resemblence and use of colours. This

lm has helped me form my story and wasincredibly helpfull that it too was based in a

forest.

INFLUENCES

How to train your dragon.This lm is incredibly artistic, a lot likesecret of kells, but is a 3D based lm. Iwas mostly inuenced by this from the

humour and little subtle gags it held. Italso held its serious moments. I enjoyedthe bond between the dragon and Hiccupand found the love/hate bond with Hic-cup and Astrid inuencial for part of my

story.


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inuences

Dr SeussWith Dr Seuss I always nd his work captivating! hisability to make humorous little stories from just every-day objects. The art style for Dr Seuss is also inspiring

to the art style that im working on. Dr Seusss charactersare largly out of proportion and odd looking. even the

trees and mountains show resemblence to icon art work,and it has helped me think more in a childs mind.

inuences

The IllusionistWith the Illusionist I was incredibly intrested in the art

from and the use of colour throughout the lms back-grounds, the use of thick and thine lines depicting dis-

tance. I found the lack of speech really fascinating aswelland concidered doing this for my lm but I felt as tho

my audience would get bored easily with no jokes beingcracked and voices being heard.


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Backgrounds

The Black Forest.Ive decided to choose The black For-

est as my background location or,as its called in Germany, Schwarz

Waldt.The Black forest is based in the south west of Germany and is known for

its wooden Mountain range.The highest mountain range/peak is the Feldberg, which is 1,493 meters

high.The area is a rectangular shape with the length of about 200km.

The name Black forest was given to it because when the Romans walkedthrough the forest it was mostly dark (black) and lacked sunlight due to

the large thick trees which populate the forest.The Black forest is mostly formed by a mixture of sandstone and granite.The Black forest used to be twinned with the Vosges mountains by tec-

tonic plates.

Origionally covered by Glasiers, the Black forest nowholds several lakes such as the Ammersee lake which is17 meters deep and according to legends is inhabited by

a spirit called Nix.

the


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The

rivers.The Black forest is part of the conti-

nental divide. This is between the At-lantic ocean drainage baisin and the

Black Sea.

The Rivers that go through theBlack forest are:

Enz.Kinzig.Murg.

Neckor.

Rench.The Black forest also holds water falls such asthe All saints waterfall and the Triberg waterfall. Although it may not be very well known, it is ru-

moured for its tranquility and folk takes.


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Ammersee LAKE


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Animals

Most commonly found at the-BLAck forest

Cattle - rare breed ofHinterwalderberg cattle

The giant earth worm Lumbri-cus badensis (only found in the Blackforest)

Horses - Black forest foxes (usu-ally used for heavy leighbour)

Eagles and owls

Wild boars.

Local

towns and events

Popular towns-FreidburgGengenbach

Staufen

HaslachAltensteig

Calw (Birthplace of Hermann Hessewho was a German Swiss poet, nov-

elist and painter)

Small clusters of housesaround the forest. The littletowns and villages are well knownfor their wood carvings. Such ascuckoo clocks which have been

around since the eighteenth century.

Local events such as thefastnact

is incredibly popular.Its in the time leading up to lent onRosenmontag, which is commonlyknown by the monday before Ash

wednesday.

This is when the localscrowd in the streets wearing

masks.


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THE

Lost forest boy.

A boy walks into Berlin Claiming hehas been living in the the German For-

est for Five year.

This story inuenced the layout towards my lm, I was amazedto hear that this boy and his father had been living in the Black

Forest for ve years because they were in ore with the power andbeauty that the Forest held.

It is as if the Forest istelf was keeping themhostage!

To me it sounded like a real life case of a twisted version of PeterPan, a young boy living in a magical forest.

I then looked into it a bit further and read that it, to some peoplefelt like a adaptation of a brothers Grimm type story,

I instantly got inuenced by this Brothers Grimm Idea andstarted looking into the fairytails and myths and legends around

that area.I wanted to create a story were fairy tales are the only way that

you can escape and to use your imagination. Its brilliant for chil-dren and would hopefully inuence them.


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Theart style

RUSSIAN ICONS.

Presumed to be brought in by Kievan Rus after follow-ing the conversion to Orhodox christianity in 988AD.

However it orgionally came from

Greece.The Russian icons then had models follow quickly af-ter by Byzantine art, which was stabelized in the capi-tal constantinople. But the Russians widend the vocabof styles beyond aynthing else found in the orthodox

practise.

Personal art was hard to nd in the religioussector for Russians in the 17th century.

Russian icon painting became strongly inuenced byreligious paintings and engravings from protestant and

europe based catholics.


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Russian icon

Techniques.

Russian Icons are typically painted onsmall sections of wood and can even be dis-played on a wooden board with two doors on each

side which can open and close reavealing a religiousscene depicted through icon art.

Mostly all icon paintings were skillfully mastered to

always contain a large message from the bible.

You can even nd some icon work scratched andcarved into copper sheets, and where always found inRussian homes in a special area. This area was mostlyknown as the red or even beautiful wall, where they

would place the icons.

Although the most common place for Rus-sian icons were in churches and monaster-

ies.

The gures arent displayed to rep-resent anatomicaly correct bodies.

The bodies are mostly elongatedwith the body framed as an out-

line around a detailed body.

Faces are very simplistic with not much

realistic features. Incredibly at based.Colouring is very bold with not much shading.

It feels very much like an earthy based version ofstained glass windows.

The surroundings are very detailed and cause alarge use of the imagination.

I feel that the faded affect would bring an authenticand earthy feel for my art style towards this work.


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Meeting an icon artist.

Silvia Dimitrova

Silvia was raised up in northan Bulgaria until she won a place in appliedarts at Troyan at the age of 13. She then graduated in 1989 and studied icon

painting in Soa as an apprentice for Georgi Tchouchev.

Her work has been exhibited aswell in many cathedrals around theworld. She has even been commissioned to create many pieces of work to

be presented and placed inside the cathedrals.


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Silvia also showed me more of her work which are adaptations of Icons in a sort of arabic approach. Silvia ex-plained to me saying that she uses the same techniques and styles, but has adapted them into her own techniques.This gives her more freedom in experimenting, and trying different skills. Silvia also explaines to me that in

these paintings she often sticks to one colour and works around it, and outlines with the gold which is a vitalcolour in all icon paintings.


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Inuencial

Artist

Given to me by Silvia.

On my visite to Silvia Iasked her what artist inuencedher most with her work and wouldbe beneacial to me and my work.Silvia answered that the artistthat would help me a lot would be

an artist called Mikhail Vrubel.Mikhail started off in Russian iconpaintings and, like Silvia, startedto go in their own direction andcreate icon inspired work.His art style is incredibly wild incomparison, but if you notice thesmall details he displayes you cansee the techniques of icon paint-ings. For instance the way Mikhaildepicts the folds in the fabric andthe attend faces. Mikhail alsouses the same gurative style insome of his work and often turnsit into a more realistic body. As ifthe icon paintings themselves aretransforming.

I understand that this art style isntexactly Russian icons, but its inu-enced by the art style and I found itincredibly usefull. The main imagethat stuck out in my mind and inu-enced my story was this image.

This painting, to me, showed excitment andenergy which I want to display in my lm. So,based on this painting I have decided on workingmy story through and around it. It is how I thinkthe water goddess Nix to look like. Incrediblyinspiring and beautiful, yet deadly and dangerousto be around.


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Looking into the techniques of

RUSSIAN ICONS

During my visit with Silvia I asked if she had any books showing how todraw the basics for Russian icons, and anything that I could use for ref-erencing, such as how to draw mountains, clouds, water even animals.

Silvia then gave me a copy of a book that she had been using herself, It iscalled the Pahela. Which to me seemed like the bible for drawing Russian

icons. It had everything that I needed to create this lm.


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pre - production

REPORT

My four cards to work with were: Childrens fea-ture lm, Newspaper proprietor, German Forest andRussian Icons.At rst I really wasnt looking forward to having to work in Russian

icons as an art style. I remember having to study Russian icon artist in

my History of art classes. I found the art style tedious and bland; I did

enjoy their use of colour but found icon art work dull. However I do

enjoy challenges and decided to keep my cards.

When I was researching I found it hard to come up with a story. Iwasnt enjoying my art style, and having to put a newspaper proprie-

tor in a German forest seemed somewhat tricky. I decided to start off

with looking into German Forests and choose which one to base my

story in. This is when I came across the lost boy news article.

A young boy of 16 appeared in Berlin claiming he had been living in

the Black Forest with his father who suddenly became ill. The boy

explained saying that if he died he must travel to Berlin. After the fa-

thers death he buried him within the Forest and travelled to Berlin on

small essentials and ripped cloths.

Once I read this article I knew exactly were to base my story and

what the story would be about. Originally I intended to do the lost

boy story, and have my newspaper proprietor nd him on the road.

They then both travel to Berlin with the proprietor noting down eve-

rything he says, and later writes an article about him.

However I thought this story is leading too far away from the For-

est itself and that the lost boy took over the role as the main char-

acter. So I decided to base my story around the lost boy and the

cause for my newspaper proprietor to travel to The Black Forest.

I looked into the Black Forest and discovered that it was most com-

monly known for its myths and legends which made me think

about fairy tales, in particular the Brothers Grimm. I love theirmorbid intake on fairy tales and thought it could be a nice twist for

the younger viewer. On my Black Forest research I came across the

lakes in the Forest, and found that one lake had an apparent spirit

living within it called the Nix. This, to me, helped build my story

even more.

While researching I found many interesting facts about the sur-

roundings of the forest, and decided to have a local cattle farmer

who would be a tough young woman. I called her Annette, which

in German means Grace and Favour. I thought this was perfect es-pecially because she takes my main character through the forest in

search for this lost boy story. She is also to live in a small town just

outside of the Forest called Calw.

Calw is very well known for its wooden carvings specially cuckoo

clocks with came about in the eighteenth century (when my story

is based)

I had my story; young proprietor in which I have named Leo. Who

had just inherited his fathers business, then decides to nd a good

story, travels to the Black Forest in search for a story on the lost

boy. Meets Annette who agrees to take him through. However

they get lost and seek guidance from the water goddess Nix. Who

will only let them free if they play her game, which is based on

local myths on legends and Grimm fairy tales. They must defeat

these and will be Free (the story is explained more in depth in the

summary)


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Next on my list, which admittedly, I was not looking forward too

was the art style. I started of looking into Russian Icons and draw-

ing out the style, but I wasnt connecting with the images or style

and found it hard to follow. However in the holidays, Due to me

feeling a bit lost I decided to go visit Silvia Dimitrova who has

been creating religious icons for years. All of her work is incred-ibly detailed and vibrant.

When I arrived I was pretty nervous, I brought my sketchbook

along to show her what I had been doing so far with my character

designs, but being surrounded by all her work was pretty daunt-

ing. However Silvia was so lovely and welcoming.

After looking through her portfolio and explaining what my pro-

ject was about and what I needed to achieve she icked through

my sketchbook to see what I had been doing. The rst thing we

talked about was the character designs.In all I was surprised as to how much she liked my character de-

signs. She said I seemed to have to a fair amount of icon detail in

my characters, and that they would be appealing to kids. Silvia

commented on the eyes explaining that they were perhaps a bit

too big for the traditional icons facial features. However she said I

had done well with looking at the structure of the nose, face shape

and especially the hair. She was happy to see that I had put a lot of

thought into the hair detail. One thing that she pressured me into

re thinking about is the detail of the folds in the clothing.

In all icon paintings the clothing is to be incredibly detailed and

vibrant. Silvia also mentioned to me about colour. I was worried

that for my Nix character I as using colours that werent found

much in icon paintings.

I thought from researching into icons they used more earthy

colours such as reds, browns, greens, yellow etc but Silvia ex-

plained to me that, true, earth colours were commonly found

but they did enjoy using vibrant colours such as purple and

vibrant greens and blues. However the main colour that has

to be displayed in my work is gold! Gold leaf is featured in all

Russian icon work.

When it came to creating the backgrounds I couldnt decide

whether or not I wanted to do them digitally or by hand. In

the end I decided that I wanted to get the actual paint brush

effect. To me its more exciting and vibrant than using a digi-tal paintbrush. Your feel the painting a lot more and see the

brush strokes.

The scene I decided to work on is the scene were the two

come across the goddess Nix. In this scene you have the for-

est and lake in it which gives the viewer a better idea as to

what the lm is about and based in. I also thought it would be

a good scene to introduce the characters that are quite large in

this lm.

By Lauren Jansons

Schwarzwaldt Research Bible Lauren J

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