For this last project, we had to take the story of the Addams Family visiting some relatives in Germany, design the relatives (a mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter), and also design their house. Here is some pre vis work I did at the beginning of the project:
At first, I wasn't really into this project...the story wasn't really that fun to me, and I also didn't want to take the obvious route and make them scary "monsters". I wasn't producing the kind of work that I wanted so I figured I better build on the story that we were given so I could come up with some awesome characters and a cool house. And so one day, I was watching Unsolved Mysteries, and there was a story on there about a girl who woke up one day and didn't remember who she was at all. When her parents came to visit her in the hospital, she had no love for them because she couldn't remember who they were. And for a moment, I envied her, because there are a few people in my life who have caused me a great deal of pain...and I wondered what it would be like if I just forgot them completely. So I realized that for me at least, emotions are connected to memories.
Sometimes when I'm walking around campus or downtown, I will see certain spots where something in my life has happened, and remember who I was with when it happened, etc...and then I start to feel that the memory is a ghost, because I can see it so clearly, yet it isn't there. And I start to wonder, what would happen if all of these moments were playing out at the exact same time, and how chaotic it would be. These observations became the basis for the story of my characters.
This is the character line up of the family I created.
This is Edmund, the father. He is an amateur scientist, just starting out. The reason he decided to peruse science so suddenly is because he is trying discover a way of dispelling bad memories to in turn get rid of the negative emotions connected to them. In a experiment gone wrong, instead of removing all of his bad memories, they were transferred into his shadow, turning it evil. Now his bad memories follow him wherever he goes.
This is Magnolia, the mother. She runs their bed and breakfast, which is what they turned their house into. She has a multiple personality disorder brought on by her husband's experiments. Dispelled memories of certain people from the minds of a few who stayed at the bed and breakfast now inhabit her and can appear at random. There is a German mythical creature called a Wolpertinger that is a mixture of a bunch of animals put together, and so I used that as inspiration for magnolia to represent her multiple personalities.
This is Nutmeg, the son. He has developed a conditon after witnessing his sister's death that allows him to turn into a small tree. He enjoys collecting plants and eating dirt on all of his food. He can hide in plain sight and usually uses his ability to spy on the people who stay at their bed and breakfast. That way, if he overhears something about a bad memory someone has, he goes to tell his dad, who then offers to help them get rid of them...but he's really just using them as guinea pigs.
This is Piper, the daughter. She is a Remnant, a left over memory of the daughter they once had who died falling out of a tree she was climbing with her brother. She is not a ghost, rather she is a piece of the memory of her. She is the reason why Edmund is trying so diligently to get rid of bad memories because her presence reminds him of how he couldn't protect her. She is not aware that she is dead.
This is the house which is a bed and breakfast run by Magnolia. The people who stay here are usually plagued with bad memories from which they are suffering. Thus, they willingly become test subjects for Edmund. The problem is, the ejected memories then inhabit the house instead of going completely away, so in a sense, the house is haunted by these memories. Visitors in the house can be transported at any time into a memory that's not theirs and experience every emotion that came along with it. The abundance of these memories will eventually destroy the house. Then we had to design the kids' rooms:
Nutmeg's room
Piper's room
The story is really long and kinda complicated, but I still love it...so much so that if someone else does something like it, I will be pissed lol But I'm really satisfied with how everything came out because I was more invested in the story. All in all, I am proud of how I did this semester.
