Animated Short Film WIP: Succor Forlorn

Concept Art Color Mock-Up

HOW THE HECK DID I GET HERE????

Well, THIS is HOW; It started LIKE THIS:

I'd already gone through all the trouble of blogging my goals out on my Main Art Blog when when my #ArtVsArtist/#ArtVArtist/AnimationVsAnimator

Meme videos were still charting on Twitter, plus the fact that Pokemon Go suddenly hit an all time HIGH in user-ship and my Pokemon Go Tweets were also charting still, so my friend Roland & I were discussing stuff, and I had been wanting to re-cut the stuff in my #AnimationVsAnimator meme video into an actual animation/artist/Filmmaker/Dirctor's Demo.

I never got to actually do my final After Effects VFX final edit because the program kept vetoing the clip no matter how compressed I made it, but had no problem importing other videos... this is an issue I often get with Adobe CC and Windows updates, the updates also screwed up my entire iTunes, and my audio/sound card in my computer which was already going bad. (I litterally just started to sort that out FINALLY since last night and all morning today, for the ba-jillienth time trying)

So, not only had I done things like spruce up my Vimeo, portfolios on ArtStation, but I felt this desire to work on JUST a Demo that was a Director's Demo but as a DP (Director of Photography for Cinema).

Here's the HD version from my Meme Clip:

So, I'd started going through my video clips & B-Roll I shot Spring, Summer, and Fall. I wanted it to be a "Video Portrait" but a "Self Portrait" style as a Director/Filmmaker but with just regular camera work and maybe a few VFX thrown in, or some fancy edits.

I found a number of clips I shot of myself, experimental stuff... and at the time, I hated all of it, but, I'd ALSO hated the stuff I actually ended up using in Self Portrait clip I used in my Meme video. So, I decided to try some VFX experiments with the video clips I had. It actually went incredibly well, and was much easier than I'd thought. I'd been so frustrated with After Effects for a week on my Animation/Artist/Filmmaker Demo that I had no expectations for anything to work....

But, THIS is what happened in the 1st one:

Then, I figured, what if I tried this with Trapcode? SO, I did. I did a number of experiments with my B-Roll using Trapcode form...

I had also been suddenly on a 90s/Y2K/2000s Techno kick, and kept finding all sorts of goodies there, with another uptick in my tweets & follows just for THAT stuff on Twitter.... So, I posted more....

Then, a few Techno/Eurodance oldies came up:

Anyways, those were just a FEW of the things that I'd dug up on YouTube, or in my own archives... I'd also even found out that there's a NEW Winamp, and even spent a about 1-2 days making my own Winamp Skins, which ALSO made me VERY interested in 90s & Y2K EVERYTHING all over again! I also got a Skin maker program. If you want some of the Skins I made you can pretty much download ALL of them HERE.

And, since I had been doing VFX Animation Experiments with my B-Roll, I kept stumbling into other things I'd originally wanted to try doing using After Effects CC so then THESE happened:

(BTW: These clips are Creative Commons if you want to rip them n use them for ur own projects)


We had also been hit with so many kinds of weather, and despite this Pokemon Go was going crazy with events, so I often wanted to participate in as many as I could even tho all the PokeStops & PokeGyms are a long walking distance in both directions from my home. Some days I went out, and other days I was stuck inside. Either too cold, too windy, too much snow up to my waste, floods, road construction, power outs, you name it. Not a fan of living in New England AND NEITHER IS MY BACK.

But, it just so happened that on a Thursday evening I was outside playing Pokemon Go trying to do these Pokemon Go event tasks and it was, really cold, I had all the music in my head.... and, I started to realize that maybe a Demo wasn't really the way to go with what I had just made...

I mean, LOOK at all of that stuff!

So, as I was walking around that night I started to have these concepts come into my mind, and it reminded me of some things I had done as a teenager... only more EMO. I didn't usually do EMO sad stuff.... except THIS: (-and maybe some other stuff I no longer have, which I don;t have this one either... )

Fathoming Oubliette

It's titled "Succor Forlorn"

I started to have this concept for a video art piece, the themes, and all of that... so, I sketched up a rough Concept Art which I am hoping to animate starting within the next day or 2:

Also on DeviantArt: Sketch & Color Mock-up

I also wrote a Poem of how I wanted the themes to go. I spent an evening writing it in my paper notebook, then reworked it the following day, and then I also typed and reworked it on another day for about half a day.

The Poem is called "Stargazed Yearning"

You can read the Poem texts HERE.


Then, I wanted to record the audio of myself reciting the poem, but also acting it out... it was a very frustrating endeavor because my spouse was on Spring Break from MASS ARTS Boston, and my daughter also kept having days off, or half days, and I can ONLY record it with NO ONE AT HOME.

I was REALLY feeling it when I 1st wrote it, but couldn't record it due to all the home/house noise. My friend also kept making & breaking his plans with me as well... so, I finally just gave up trying to re-record it after the 3rd day of trying because I just couldn't into the right groove again to connect with the FEELINGS I wanted... and I mean, I tried EVERYTHING like digging up old songs that used to make me cry after a teenaged break-up, dug up photos of ex-boyfriends, or dudes that rebuked me... but, I was just so fed up with wasting time, and since I had recorded at least 7 full long takes, and multiple spot takes of certain segments, I just spent 1-days just chopping & Frankenstein'ing everything until I fore-fit it to work... hopefully it sounds LESS like a hack TRYING to read word-for-word out-loud, and MORE like someone actually abandoned on a planet.

But, anyways, the feedback I got was pretty positive. 

I wanted it to be this kind of fantasy theme, because she mentions she's been stuck on a planet for "1000 orbital planetary years".... So, how long is a year on that planet's orbit? And, how long is 1000 of those years???? So, u start to get a sense that she's not "normal".... as far as Earth goes.
Is she a ghost? 
Is she an alien humanoid? 
Is she an immortal?

So, it's open to interpretation...

The Audio Version is called 
"Stargazed Yearnings" (plural)

This Final Audio Design version took me about a whole day and evening alone:

Also on NewGrounds for Free Download HERE

The short film will be called "Succor Forlorn".

There's a number of discrepancies about the pronunciation of the word "succor". When I was in high school we were taught this words as sounding similar to Olde French and Lantin original pronunciations like "soo-kor" however, online a number of dictionaries tend to list the pronunciation as sounding like "sucker" and is the origin of a baby's pacifier and lollypops & hard candies which were originally all called "suckers". The word originally means to soothe or comfort, but also can mean solace, safety, haven, help, aide, relief, respite, assistance, etc.

But, it's also a pun for "sucker" as in being gullible, mislead, or duped.

She keeps on hoping that when she was left on the planet by someone to save her that they would come back for her, so she keeps on calling out for him to return. 

Anyways, I want to start animating it, hopefully within the next few days. I'm really tired from working on the audio this week, so I didn't work on anything today.