Pre-vis and Some story talk

To start, an update from Karen that I she sent me tonight!


And some explanation from Karen:

"The first square is a look at the scene when the cougar is stalking the guy and the girl. I showed them hiding behind the trashcan the cat moments away from discovering them. The second image is a possible look on what the main character experiences when the little girl uses her powers. She is shown really white and pale and ghostly. She has dark circles under her eyes and bright red lipstick. I wanted her to be spooky and still cute at the same time. I hope this helps a little. The silhouettes that are overlapping her are ghost cougars that serve as a metaphor or foreshadowing danger. the picture below that one is a close up of the girl in her strange telepathic state. The 3rd picture is the statue in the middle of the town square, if you want to show the character looking up at a statue."

There is some really strong imagery going on here. Think it is a good mix of everything we talked about last meeting, and some new ideas tossed in. Great work!! This exploration will be extremely helpful when we further solidify the story and design at our next meeting (planning for one soon).

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Now what I have done. I may have strayed slighting from some of what we talked about, but it's a little hard not to when you translate ideas to drawings. I want to clarify nothing here is intended to be a final storyboard. This is merely my very rough attempt to loosely visualize some of the ideas that have been buzzing around in my head.

It starts by the soldier entering his home town after being away for 10 years (or so) at war. I see this as Act 1 & 2, the 3rd act hasn't been done yet:


(automaticly starts playing the slideshow. Hit pause and click through each frame)

I toyed around with a few ideas here. To start, I wanted to hint at a possible backstory for the killer cat, and how he came into existence by 2 brothers in this fantasy war torn town. More on that in a future post; I want to create a family tree of sorts showing how all the characters are related as well as a timeline.

Second, I thought it might be interesting to have the cat be excessively protective of the girl. Like in a "kill-every-who-comes-in contact-with-her" kind of way. You could think of the cat as sort of a curse for the girl. She cannot have human relations in fear that the cat will murder anyone too close. That is why she is at one point happy to see the guy, but then once she sees the cat, tries to push him away. She returns only when she realizes the cat has already set his eyes on the man to try and convince the cat to stop.

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The biggest differences between what Karen and I have done so far seems to be with the girl. I've taken her away from that magical state to work with my different take on the story, while Karen has fully embraced the mystical side.

What we have now is choices, both with her design and what role she plays in the story. Is she a protagonist, or a victim? Perhaps both? Maybe if she was wondering soul of sorts left in the town that would work. She could need some sort of human relation to be fulfilled for her release, but the cat keeps making it difficult.

Maybe I'm just talking crazy, what does everyone think?