Water concept

The research connection

I have looked at a wide variety of research to do with water - which has influenced the development you see below. For instance a photograph by Greg Gorman who photographs a man submerged in water - the second is a page from Jung's book 'The archetypes and the collective unconscious' which states: "Water is the most common symbol for the unconscious." It also includes a man describing (similar to me) that his dreams are based around water. In addition I have recorded water dreams from my dream diary. I often dream of water and it normally is dangerous or deadly in the dream - this is what i first thought about when creating this project. I also have several other references to do with water such as Freud who believes it is a symbol of Birth - "Being pulled from water symbolizes birth, which Freud termed "the first experience attended by anxiety.""  Water is a place where we feel safe, mothers womb- opposite to how thought, i may explore the idea of water instead representing a safe haven. 

The water concept.

Below are two of the ideas that I came up with for the water concept This originated from my dreams which i often dream about water destroying or flooding the location i am at. I have therefore generate lots of ideas where water could be used to represent anxiety. To the left shows the story of a girl that is suddenly flooded with water - which represents her anxiety. We see multiple shots of rooms flooding slowly - she quickly runs up stairs to get away in her room but the water finds her there too and she swims to the ceeline where she takes her last breath until the anxiety consumers her. The second image i created of the idea of people bottling up their emotions instead of letting them out - she becomes so consumed with all of her anxiety that she finally explodes with water - flooding all those closest to her. My biggest concern about this idea is that i will not be able to a animate the water well enough - water is very difficult to draw and so im afraid that i will not be able to draw it in the way i imagine. 

Author's own

Author's own

Author's own

Above is one of the ideas that i generated to do with my water concept. (the water is anxiety represented in my own dreams.)  Above is one of my favourites, as it possesses alot of movement and imagination which i like within my animations. The concept is of a girl that is walking, however every time that her foot hits the ground water splashes up from her heel and a creature is produced made up of anxieties. This creature torments her until the next one is created by the other foot and so a vicious cycle occurs. However i would need to add more to this story wise. As much as i like this idea i am worried that it may be too difficult to animation because it is water and splashes which i have really no experience with. Below are some of the experiments I've created for this piece. 

Author's own

Author's own

Author's own

Above i have created a short animation experiment to see whether i could animate water. One of my main concepts is to use water however i know that this may be very difficult to animate. I have quickly created a gif that is a splash of water. I used a reference video for this (http://flashfx.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/water-splash-tutorial-part-2.html) it let me understand not only to draw this animation but also to understand the physics behind the way that a splash works (which will help me later on when i come to animating my own slash.) I did this experiment so that i can see how i can bring life to water. In the same way a character needs expression and movement (if i were to chose an idea on water) i would want the water to look as 'real' as possible (alive). I do not want an ordinary line that represents water - water has so much movement which i would like to explore. After creating the small splash gif i then converted that into a symbol and added it to a pair of feet (that are walking similar to the development idea that i had in the sketches above.) These feet are only meant to be rough - the walk isn't as move but it is only meant to be a guide to let me know whether this idea is possible. The concept behind this is: the girls feet is meant to walk and water splash out from her heel as she steps forward - this water will they change into strange creatures and anxieties of the girl before dissolving as the next is created. Although i realize this could be quite hard - during my idea generation i wanted to be as free as possible. The splash may not be accurately correct for thee step - i am still pleased with this small test as it shows this idea could work - i would like to animate this splash growing into a creature next so that i can see if this is possible.