Hidden Stories -

My searches through the Edinburgh museums brought me to an object in the writers museum - A Kaleidoscope that once belonged to famed Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

Informed by a very nice man at the museum, i learned that Robert Louis Stevenson's Father was a lighthouse engineer. The Kaleidoscope was something that would be taken with Robert upon the trips to the lighhouses. The other things that interested me about his life were that he rowed from Antwerp, Belgium, all the way to Paris, and that his most famous book "Treasure Island" was originally called "The Sea Cook". Other Facts were leanred from the writers museum, and the RLS website - http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/

For my animation i decided to make a story where he kept his kaleidoscope throughout his life, seen in major events such as the ones mentioned above. I decided to show four events

1. RLS atop a lighthouse as his father fixes it
2. RLS rowing from Antwerp to Belgium
3. RLS changing the title of his book
4. RLS in his final days in Samoa, his place of death

 obviously this plan involved Robert from various stages of his life, so i set out to design the character in his differnt life stages, looking at photos from the appropriate era.

 Firstly a young Robert - he had a middle class upbringing, so his clothes would be more fine than most.
I wanted the character to at first seem bored, and a little selfish or spoiled, but he would be transfixed by the beauty that surrounded him atop the lighthouse.

 Robert At the age of 20 or so. We have the normal wear above, and his more practical travel gear below that.
I wanted the 20 something Robert to be adventurous, brave and free spirited, as well as a little foolish.

Robert in his mid 30s  What he would wear in the day whilst writing.
This Robert would be more wise and interesting, and more of an indoor person. Prone to overthinking, and gets easily lost in his work.

Robert in his later days, 40 -50.
This robert would be older and wiser, but quite tired and ill, in his last days. Still able to see the beauty in his surroundings the way the kaleidoscope taught him. At peace.

From there i set off on my storyboard. I used a post-it note system: throwing out the bad frames until i make a suitable storyboard.

 in breif - shot of lighthouse, then a close up of RLS swinging legs, looking bored. the light turns on, and he is transfixed by the spinning light. He takes out his kaleidoscope and looks into it.

(I decided a nice way to transition from one age to another was to use the kaleidoscope, have the kaleidoscope come down, and see the next stage of Robert's life). In brief - FPV of rowboat, then zooms out to see 2 in the canoe as they set of. They pass under a bridge, and it starts raining. It begeins to rain more as the rowers become more disgruntled, the rain stops, the boat stops, RLS takes out the kaleidoscope and looks into it.

In breif - RLS is sitting at his desk, writers block. We see "The Sea Cook" and he suddenly springs forward and changes it to "Treasure Island". He leans back into his chair looking pleased with himself, then takes out his kaleidoscope and looks into it.

While trying to think of a visual for the fourth scene, i came to the conclusion that what i already had was already good, and could be a story on its own, so i decided to leave  out the fourth scene. The structure was better with three scenes i thought.

i then created an animatic

I started then to look at beauty shots, and different materials to use.

I decided to draw the first scene of the film, the lighthouse, using my initial drawings as reference, i made some simple backdrops to place them against, and created a scene that i wanted to use.

 I looked at using coloured pencil, making it black and white using pen, then i settled on watercolour.  it took me several attempts before acheiving the look that i actually wanted, which i ended up using as the establishing shot for the film.

With my aesthetic for my film in mind, i set out to creat some character models. I enjoyed the kind of sketches i had created of the characters so i combined the two styles to create my test model.

I thought he looked fitting, so i decided to keep him, creating several other models for different shots.

(test for the rowing scene)

I thought for the kaleidoscope effect it would be interesting to have the view of the kaleidoscope seem totally different to the world in which we see Stevenson, so i decided to use a different medium for the kaleidoscope parts, using film.

Just to emphasise the difference between the first person view of the kaleidoscope and our view of Stevenson, i decided to only play music during the kaleidoscope clips, with no sound effects, and then sound effects with no music elsewhere.

A lot of my scenes would involve a lot of complex movement in the background and characters, so i decided to do a lot of things in post production, After Effects and the like. There i could add good lighting effects for the lighthouse and rain for the river also.

https://vimeo.com/64306246