Animation: Icarus Project

My idea for Tim's Icarus Project is going to be rather abstract. I have thought about a few ideas but the one that i think is the most interesting is the idea I had about falling forever. My plan is to have Icarus fall into the sea, but he carries on falling and then all of a sudden he falls out the bottom of the sea back out into the sky. But this time it's different as everything is upside down. It then flips back the right way again and all of a sudden he is underwater again, this repeats and get faster each time. On his way down there is going to be a variety of creatures such as birds and sea creatures and eventually ends up in limbo (an empty dark void with no sound).

The sound is going to be very important in my animation as I am going to use it to create a sense of Icarus's world falling apart as he is entering 'Limbo'. The sounds at the start of the animation are going to be normal, as Icarus keeps falling the soundscape begins to turn, using more dreamlike sounds for example echoes, repeating the sounds and a lot of other effects. A good example of this is; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXQCo9fLYWI created by H3H3Productions.

The way the sounds are edited in this video create a sense of tension and can make you feel unsettled. I could achieve this by layering up sound creating loops and heavy editing. The sounds that I plan on using are splashing, screeches, wind, birds and a lot of whooshing sounds.

Hopefully, this will portray Icarus's world falling apart on his journey to limbo.

Icarus Concept Art

For my design I thought about the stature of Icarus. I figured that Icarus would have been very muscular if he was going to be able to lift himself with man-made wings, I took it a step further and exaggerated the size of Icarus to be this giant man.

After Deciding this I then went on to looking for some references for the design. I came across an artist called Michael Hussinger who had drawn this gif.

This reminded me of a character from the film 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' who has the same facial features. I wanted to use the idea of the monobrow, big nose and mustache combo.

I then looked at some Pixar character designs and came across Braves Dad from 'Brave' I really liked how his neck is connected to his head so I decided to use this design.