the halloween tree

Today me and Grigsby came into college to collect The Halloween Tree book. Unfortunatly Jared was delayed in London but whilst we waited Grigsbys starred in the colleges perspectus...hes an actor dont you know!

Dan then had to leave for work but I agreed to stay on and wait for Jared. After colleting the book at lunchtime i left to go read the world of The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. The book contains illustrations completed by Joseph Mugnaini which already give a big hint to the style of the book (included below). The drawings depict a very detailed set of characters which is not where i would want to take this project: the characters and the events would need to be simplified massively! 

Friend or foe? Mr Moundshround is an ambiguous character throughout the book, although he seemed to help the boys, there was no doubt he was powerful.
Moundshround's house along with the Halloween Tree abundant in pumpkins each carved with a new face or figure

The kite the boys and Moundshround use to fly to the different countries and relive the various celebrations of Halloween.

The explanation of Witches were that they were hated purely because the were the most intelligent people and therefore suspected. An interesting idea in itself. 




The story details the journey of 8 young boys who travel the world along with the illusive Mr. Moundshroud to find the meaning behind Halloween. They're also in search of their friend Pipkin who was taken from them during the night and who they fear is dead. Moundshroud takes the boys from France, Mexico to Egypt, learning new ways of celebrating Halloween, the fear of the night, the rememberance of the ghosts and the celebration of the sun and life.

Overall...

This book is fantastically detailed, the description is wonderfully rich and very dark. However, in order to do this book justice, i don't feel there is a specific scene or chapter that can be taken from the book. It would require a lot of rewriting of which Im sure we'd lose the quality of the story. With a minimum of 9 characters in a scene, it would strike an impossible job for a 2 membered team to model, rig, animate for a scene of 30 seconds. The only possibility i saw would be completing part of the chapter where the boys approach Moundshroud's house and are introduced to The Halloween Tree which would be fun to design and make. Moundshroud himself is never seen apart from his glowing eyes...which could be completed by simple lighting. We could also reduce the amount of boys to one or two and really simplify their design according to their Halloween costume e.g witch, skeleton etc. My only other suggestion would be to make a 30 second trailer of the book for a television series. Trailers require a lot of information though which would mean we would need to make a lot of sets to give a true taster of all the book offers....

In short....i think we should abandon this idea and look for something much SHORT SHARP and SNAPPIER

I will discuss our options tomorrow with Dan, there's no final idea at the moment, but at least were not choosing to complete something on an epic scale.