Animation Project

  Animation: Urban Legend 

     By: Charles Boswell and Leticia DeGiulio

Concept Statement:

Our animation is based around Horror. Horror is displayed through the concept of Urban Legends. It displays

skepticism, drama, and shock value to represent this history of story telling. This animation revolves around the

speculation of a young character whose pride leads to his death.

      Our animation starts with a downwards pull of the screen, filled with lightning and dark, purple skies. The title hangs

above a blazing fire and rotten trees, surrounded by teenagers and the narrator, Leticia. The story begins with Leticia

explaining the history of the Urban Legend; Priest Elias Frisk kidnapped children within the town years ago, and murdered

them in the same woods the teens are standing in at that moment. After the parents of the children discovered this horrific

news, they hung Elias by the bridge down the river. During this story telling, the viewer is brought back in time to see the

horrific events take place, with Elias, the townspeople, and the children. The screen is filled with sepia tone to signify a

change in time. 

As the story progresses, a speculative friend chimes in, saying that it cannot be real and it is all “kid stuff”. Leticia

doesn’t take that as an answer, and challenges fellow teen to a walk on the bridge where Elias was hung. Fast forward into

the story, and the speculative teen is standing by the bridge on a cold, windy night. He slips and crashes into the river,

crying and screaming for help because something has got a hold of him. His friends see this happen, and run to safety for

they believe the ghost of Elias and the children are pulling him to his death. In reality, the teenager had his foot stuck

between two rocks on the bottom of the river.

Some technical aspects involved in the making of this animation was drawing and use of Adobe Animate CC. We created

characters made to look realistic, with face lines and moving mouths/hands. We used old-fashioned clothing on characters

“in the past”, and sepia tones. For the present day characters, we created teenagers in present-day clothing with dark,

vibrant backgrounds. The backgrounds were made with color pencil and hues were adjusted in photo shop. Some

backgrounds also were fixed with the blue tool to give depth. We decided to create the backgrounds with colored pencil to

signify an organic feel behind the new-age cartoons. We believed that the drawn backgrounds would compliment the idea

of urban legends; an old and organic feel.

Reflection:

As a group we believe we worked well together, using class time to the best of our abilities. We had to re-do a few things a

couple of times (the backgrounds) so that it matched well with the mood of the scenes (such as darkening the sky for a

more eerie feeling, changing a background to a sepia tone for a old, rustic mood). Another thing we struggled with was

some of the transitions, for instance, the newspaper twirling into the screen; it was very difficult to match up the correct

size of the paper to the image of the priest. 

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• Depiction: We decided to depict a scary story, so we chose an “Urban Legend” to display this idea. We wanted to depict people our age in a situation that was horrifying yet believable.

• Reformatting: We made the ending more realistic verses a typical scary story that revolved around monsters. We used a real “cause of the”, the foot getting stuck in the river.

• Projection/extension: Charles used this concept within each slide; he knew what his target goal was, and then by adding small movements (hand movements, mouth movements) he considered all possible outcomes of his ideas.

• Mimicry: We went through many trial and errors when creating the animations/backgrounds. For the backgrounds, Leticia recreated them 3 times to get the exact look that was suitable. She considered mood of the scene, timeline setting of the scene, and day/night setting of the scene.

• Metaphor: We used the concept of an Urban Legend to create a new type of scary story that resulted in a more realistic ending.

Pacman:

Animation 3 second video:

Big Idea: Fear

Questions:
1. What trouble do the characters get into?
2. How will fear affect them.
3. What are the consequences of the character’s actions.


Investigate:
Research urban legends and research those images to help us with our imagery.

Technical: Adobe animate CC
Conceptual: Research urban legends
Style and feasibility: Teenage fear, graveyard





Story (basic):

Young boy hanging out with friends, they talk about haunted bridge. He doesn’t believe in the story, and his friends dare him to go check it out. He looks over the bridge, he heard a strange noise, he falls and got his foot caught in a branch, he thought it was a ghost pulling him under and he drowned.

Background:

-campfire with moving fire and dark tree silhouettes in background

-newspaper spiraled in

-outdoor scene with priest in forest with kids with river in background

-bridge with river

recycle-------bridge high enough close up, mostly water shown

-whole screen fills up with "The next night.."

-wooded simple background

-bridge, view of walking on on it

recycle------picture of kid in water

-zoom in of his foot stuck in tree, underwater scene

-daytime bridge scene, forested scene