More Theo

Not the cleverest title, huh? Oh well. Here are some more Theo sketches. This first was a test to see how she'd look next to John and it turned out to be a pretty nice drawing of her as well. Need to work on John's hair a little more, though!
She's a little manipulative and I think she enjoys the trouble that that sort of behavior stirs up. She also defends herself quickly and I think is rather quick to snap and make rash decisions too quickly. The first of the two below show her in a contemplative mood - I like the teeth together (drawn with the line across). The second is a quick retaliation at something said against her or something even inferred against her. I can now say that I'm happy with Theo. For those of yo familiar with 'The Haunting', I have come up with some first working designs for Nell (coming up soon) and am working on Luke now.

'Haunting' Beauty

Okay, okay - I have two confessions - (1) is that I feel the need to come up with compelling and, consequently, somewhat cheesy titles for these entries (for all three of you reading) and (2) I have a really bad discipline of falling for designs a little too quickly. Ideally, we should all have this incredible freedom to do a drawing and move on. I, however, kind of see the final in my head to begin with and devote my concentration to putting that idea onto the page. Hopefully, in the end, the designs work, but I'd like to be more open to enjoy a sketch but then continue in other directions and, in that, possibly coming up with an idea or design I wind up liking even more so in the end. I guess I could try working on that. Either way, I mention this as intro to my sketches of Theodora. She's the, for loss of better words, hottie in 'The Haunting'. Here's my first sketch. I borrowed from both Claire Bloom and Catherine Zeta. There was a very similar feline-like appeal to both actresses and I really wanted to employ that as the dominant appeal.
Theo, as a character, is pretty confident and in charge of herself. She's involved with this excursion to the Hill House to allow her lovers (all innuendo justified) to cool off. To Theo, it's simple: She's got a lot of love to share, the other two are the ones with the problem. Below are two more drawings. As you can see, I fell in love with the first drawing. The one thing I played around with was her hair - Catherine Zeta's hair in the later version was amazing, but way too Catherine Zeta and I wanted to work for something that said more about Theo as a character. The 'do' on the left is the one I chose to develop further

Hugh Crane Continued

Here are some more sketches of Hugh Crane. The above sketch was done after the earlier one with the 'owl-like' turn of his head. The main thing was that the beard had a nice division of shapes in it and I wanted to do a larger sketch to embellish on that or at least to go over it, in repetition, to give me time to work with the idea.

I then took all the sketches I had done and extracted bits and pieces I liked. Below was the sketch that summarized all those best elements. This sketch below, I can safely say, is one on the road to a possible final design for him. Emotionally, I really like it! Next step is to do some fashion studies to give him a really nice costume. I don't want to immediately go for the usual stereotypes in dated period pieces but I honestly think something from a 'baroque-ish' time period is indeed just what he needs; something that is obviously not from current trend but not flashy and overly 'stage costume'. As of now, I'm picturing wine colors and dusty maroons.

Hugh Crane - The Haunting's Dark Father Figure

The Haunting's real star is the long since past owner of Hill House. He led a strange and moody existence there; living, and dying there and all the happenings that developed between those years . His spectral spite lingers in the halls of the mansion and makes his contempt for the living quite obvious. Few visit. No one stays. Even the help decidedly make their hours safely between dawn and dusk. And to aid in keeping the house kept, ... well ... the gates stay thoroughly chained and locked. One wonders, though, ... are the locks there to keep people out ... or Hugh Crane in?

As I watched the two movies and read the book, I felt that Hugh Crane would be a huge, hulking bear of a man. In both movie versions, as he stampedes through the hallways, visible impact is signified by brick seperating and caving inwards, dust shifting from the newly formed craters from the floors above. I decided that if he was to be animated, his enormous presence could be shown in his true size.

In the sketch above, I gave Mr. Crane a bird-like turn of the head. We, as humans, don't, can't move in this way, really, and I thought this would give him a somewhat preternatural feel. Hope you like! More coming soon!

John Dialogue Thumbnails

If you've never seen either versions of the film or haven't read the book, we find out quite early in the work that John is pretty much responsible for the plight of the other characters that ensues throughout the movie, so there's a really large range of emotions for him; from cheerful optimism to confusion to frustration to the obvious final visceral feelings of fear and fright. On the subject of fear and fright, the catalyst for the film is that he's studying fear response in humans and therefore wants to take a selected group of people away to this secluded house and record reactions of the group from set-up events made to frighten them. In one of the first scenes in the recent version of the film, John's superior has ethical problems with him scarring people without their consent and John defends his need for his group to be unaware of his true purpose/intent. Here are some thumbnails of a line of dialogue he then delivers to justify his needs.

Aaron's Pitches Part Dos

Okay, here it is. I may not be the first in the world to say this, but it's about time to we had an animated horror film. Legend (remember, I said 'LEGEND') has it that Don Bluth was working on one (Frankenstein, I beleive) but it was just hear-say and I've never been able to confirm that. Last time I talked with Gary Goldman (yes, I have really chatted with the writer/animator partner of Don's), I failed to remember to ask him about these rumors. Either way, I think animation lends EXACTLY to the elements desired in a scary movie. My vote for a movie with potential is 'The Haunting'. I say potential because the older black and white is great for it's time but is not quite as scary nowadays. As for the newer version with Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta, Lili Taylor and Owen Wilson: it had some super cool effects (stairway Griffon is one) yet unfortunately and surprisingly lacked surprise and horror action. However, as animation, think for a moment the potential!

The first character I started sketching that I really liked was the Professor John Montague character (Liam Neeson's role). I was looking at Edward Gorey at first for the gothic feel and a bit of his unique take on anatomy certainly snuck in here and there. Especially the way I've drawn his forehead area - it practically acts as an overhang for his face, almost architecturally. Here are the initial drawings that really worked as a whole.
If this was a feature and I had a choice, I think I would most likely choose to work on John. He's a lot of fun to draw and there's a great potential for action and acting with this design. Here are some quick facial studies of him.