First Concept Designs

I did these doodles as a stress reliever during my project deadline. I think that this is how I want the film to look. I want the dogs to be pretty long limbed and gangly. I'm still not sure about the design for the girl, but I have plenty of time to look into designs.

Diana Wynne Jones

As mentioned in the previous post, Diana Wynne Jones is a big inspiration to me, and I love to read her books. I've been reading them ever since I was a young child, starting with Howls moving Castle and moving onto the Chrestomanci series. I only recently read Dogsbody, and that has become a big inspiration for my final film.

The synopsis of the book is as follows:

A powerful being fights for his life within the body of a humble, earthbound puppy.

Sirius, immortal Lord of the Dog Star and infamous for his quick temper, cannot believe it when he is falsely accused of murder and banished to Earth. There he is reborn into the body of a puppy and learns that he has the life-span of that creature to recover the missing murder weapon. If he fails, he will die.

He is adopted by Kathleen, who has no idea that her beloved Leo’ is anything more than an abandoned stray. She is a loving owner, but an unwanted guest in a family who mostly resent her presence.

Sirius soon learns that he has enemies amongst the humans as well as amongst the unearthly beings who sentenced him. How on earth can he clear his name without his special powers?

The Initial Idea

Last year I was approached by Jason about doing a short animated film for the NASTA awards, which has recently opened up a best animation award. At the time we decided that we wanted to go for it, and ideas were tossed back and forth to find something feasible in the time we had. Unfortunately, the film never went ahead. We underestimated how much time we would need for the course itself, and were never able to get past the first enthusiastic ideas. However, one of the ideas I had given stuck with me. When I originally put forth the idea, I had recently read a book by Diana Wynne Jones, called Dogsbody.

Dogsbody is about the personification of the dog star Sirius, who is framed for a crime and sent to earth in exile for punishment. He is placed into the body of a newborn puppy, and almost drowned with his siblings by the owner, who was angry at the mother for breeding with an unknown dog. Sirius survives and is picked out of the river by a young girl, and the story goes on. It is later discovered that the unknown father of dog-Sirius was one of the cwn annwn, and Sirius chases after the pack after seeing them. At the end of the story, not only Sirius chases after the pack, but the young girl who saved him and her cousins. They manage to chase the pack to the end of their hunt, and their owner, the god of the underworld, grants them a single wish each for doing so.

Since then, the idea of chasing after the dogs in my film has been a major idea of mine. I need to do a lot more research into the legends of the cwn annwn first, and I can't make it similar to the book, because that would become plagiarism. But I know that I want to do my film about the cwn annwn, and include a big chase scene.

Now that I have the basics, I need to begin refining the idea into an actual story.