Artist Statement

Here is the artist statement for the Slenderman short film now titled "Slenderman Emergence"

Chris Dike

“Slenderman Emergence”

Slenderman is an internet-born boogeyman character with a plethora of stories and series made of him and his doings.  He has a variety of supernatural abilities and traits that make him an ideal character for the horror genre.  Most of the existing fiction surrounding Slenderman deals with him driving victims to the brink of insanity and killing them.  Since I haven’t delved into his various stories I figured I could tell a different story about him with fresh eyes.  I took the rules of his existing canon and came up with somewhat of an origin story for him in a cinematic style, as opposed to the found-footage style of other series about him.

Part 1 of 5 (Composited and sound effects)

Here is part one in a near-finished state.

10-24 Progress

Part one's CG elements are almost completely rendered.  I should have part one composited by the end of the week.

I'll shoot the rest of the live-action stuff near the end of the week and possibly into next week.

No images yet. :(

Slenderman Part 1: Base footage

I was able to shoot the base footage for part 1 of my BFA thesis film over the weekend. I edited them to the timing of the animatic to compare the shots to my original plan. I think they turned out quite nicely.

Assignment: Why is this piece postmodern?

Assignment: How is your BFA thesis postmodern art? My BFA thesis is postmodern because of its context. Its in the context of an existing fan base and body of work. If you don’t already like the Slenderman meme or its stories, you probably wouldn’t be watching my video.

9-13-12 Post: Things are going well

The story is shaping up, the first part of the video has been roughly story boarded and part two is written.  Almost done writing, and I should be all set for the group critique next Monday!

And with those good notes, I leave with this.

Made from boredom last night:

BFA Contract

Chris Dike BFA Contract

1.

I will work on a short film or montage of clips showcasing visual effects and animation composited into live action.  It will be one video.

2.

The ideas behind this project are more along the lines of “What can I pull off, that will still be a challenge and show off what I can accomplish”.  The themes are unknown and will probably be deduced by the viewer.

3.

The aesthetics will be sci-fi, mechanical character and/or organic characters integrated into live action.
They may or may not be catered to support the concept.

4.

In the end, it will be a HD 720p video.  It can be played on a monitor or on a projector.

5.
This how the setup may look.

6.

I will need an HD TV or monitor, a DVD player or Laptop, a video cable to connect the two, something to put them both on separately or together, a power outlet, and possibly speakers or head phones.

7.

Production Calendar

Week of Dec-9  Prep for show

Week of Dec-2  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Nov-25  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Nov-18  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Nov-11  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Nov-4  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Oct-28  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Oct-21  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Oct-14  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Oct-7  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Sep-30  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Sep-23  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Sep-16  Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots, Animate characters, Visual effects, Rendering

Week of Sep-9  Model & rig CG characters, Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots

Week of Sep-2  Model & rig CG characters, Shoot video clips, Motion track current shots

 

CG Character(s) for BFA thesesis visual FX shots

So I finished modeling the character(s) I want to have in at least a few of my visual effects shot.
It's all subject to change.

Here's a render.

(I do intend to have a lot of the panels moving around as secondary animation.)

Where I am artistically (Response)

This is me posting the “where I am ‘artistically’” summary thing for class.
Also, copy and pasting from microsoft word creates weird spacing issues.  I have no idea why.

-Concept:

Fun/Entertaining

Action

Comedy

-Aesthetic:
Video games

Sci-fi
Stylized

-Passion:
1^st Character Rigging and Animation

2^nd Visual effects/compositing (And CG characters in live action)

-Technique:

Animate from reference footage

Integrating CG elements into live action

Artistically?  I have no idea.  I either want to make characters come to life for video games or to make funny, entertaining and possibly somewhat action based short films and achieve, with visual effects, things not possible in reality. (Not easily anyways.)  I like making people laugh and entertaining them with amazing things they might not normally see, and possibly put a funny little twist on whatever that may be.

My current inspirations are mostly the works of Corridor Digital and Freddie Wong which are both youtube, VFX-based, short-film-makers.  I also have similar inspiriations from their own in the form of gaming in general.

Corridor Digital
There's an alien on your head!

Freddie Wong

Future motion control gaming

Response to the notebook assignment

I was asked to post a response to our notebook assignment, so here it is.

I felt the notebook was useful for jotting down ideas I didn't want to forget.  Mostly ideas for visual effect shots or jokes.  It was also useful for writing down lists or class notes and even orders for Chinese food at one time.

It was a helpful little notebook for not losing ideas with but I don't think I got as much mileage out of it as most of my ideas this past week were for a short film group I started with my friends.

-Chris

BFA Show Ideas

I’m leaning more toward visual effects/compositing for my show.  I’m strongly thinking of presenting a montage of large VFX shots strung together like a movie trailer.

As of now, I’m thinking of showcasing two characters I already have rigged in the shots.

A robot:

Slenderman:

The robot would provide an interesting challenge with environmental reflections, but both would be fun to do.

1st Day of class!

In preparation for Wednesday in my Senior Studio class, I made this mini demo reel for my presentation intro.
Enjoy!