Machinations

In my last post, I mentioned my film The Machine.

It's a dark animated short based on Franz Kafka's story "In The Penal Colony".

There is a complete version of it, that I have submitted to festivals, but I personally think it's too short and unfinished (the time constraints of uni, necessitated severe edits to the script).

At the moment I wish to extend it to the level I think is the bear minimum for release, and then hopefully add a little more until it is "properly" finished - at which point I'll release it again as a "director's cut".

Just so you know what it's like and it exists (many people haven't seen it) here are some screenshots I've taken at various points of production.

 

 

 

 

An exasperating issue I noticed during early stages, that I posted on Twitter.

 

An early version of one scene. The linework was criticised and so I moved to the style shown in the other images. (This was part of style that was to incorporate additional heavier use of comicbook-style shading.)

B&W screenshots as part of the festival submission.

The submission also required a poster, so this is a rough design I threw together to fulfil that demand.

Yes I Kafkan

My final year project is partially an animation project. For it, I am adapting one of Franz Kafka's short stories In The Penal Colony. It's set on a remote island, where an explorer is being introduced to the strange archaic methods of torture and capital punishment being used in the land. The characters are a zealous Officer of the old regime that is very much behind the process, his soldier assistant, the explorer who is against it but feels torn between his morals and his ethical need to not interfere with foreign cultures and the unwitting prisoner who is to be put to death. The machine that is to carry out to procedure is also a major feature.

A rough storyboard capturing the scenes I see in my head and the major plot developments.

Preliminary sketches of the machine. The design on the right is the one I prefer, but carefully reading the descriptions in the text, it will probably end up looking more like those on the left.