The House

The witch's house is going to be a huge part of the story, so I want to flesh it out a bit more before I move on with the narrative. Symmetry and shape plays a huge role within my film and due to the opening scene animatic I know that I wanted the house to be triangular as it's a little unusual and shows that she isn't an ordinary person. I used Pinterest as a way to gather inspiration for different house types and I came up with a few designs, some of which are elaborations of houses that I already found on the website.

Although I'm not using a wide shot of the house in the forest in the first scene I'd still like to include one within the film. I think it would be really nice to show different times of day/different weather and would help to give context to the story and help the audience place the witch in her world.

Sunlight Lake

I created this piece of concept art for the music and sound proposal pitch so that they could have a better feel for my film. I created it without a house as I hadn't come up with a solid design for it yet but I want to have a shot of it reflecting in the water. I want the design of the forest to follow this, it will be very stylised and almost rigid, with a simple colour palette. I want to utilise shape in this film to my advantage, I think that simpler shapes are better and more effective than intricate, detailed, and complicated forest scenes.

House ideas

Out of all the houses I'm still drawn to the triangular one, however, it was good to experiment and see what else I could come up with. I think that they all possess magical elements in different ways, especially the one with geometric shapes laid in the design. I know that I'd like it to have a front porch because I'd like to have fairy lights and foliage covering the home.

Sunlight lake house 1

I created this design very quickly to see how it would look reflecting in the water, I want the house to be a better design than this, but I'm very happy with the way that this has turned out. I may experiment with skewing the reflection in the water so it looks more realistic, but I think that the way it's reflected now is very effective and striking.

Sunlight lake house 2

I made this second variation because I wasn't sure about the lighting and I wanted to see what a different house design would look like in a reflection. I think that I prefer the lighting in the first image, but I like the use of colour in the second image as well as the more intricate house design.

Final cabin design

After lots of experimenting I would like this to be my final design for the witch's cabin. Photoshop updated their program which was incredibly helpful because now they have a symmetry tool which cut the time of drawing this in half. It also makes sure that everything is completely identical and symmetrical which is a very important element of my film. I like the front porch and the porch roof, and the large window has a lot of potential for interior shots where I can utilise beautiful lighting to my advantage.

Witch cabin 1

This is the first colour palette I looked at for the cabin, and although I like the foliage on the porch roof and the white windows and gables, I think the other colours are a little cold. It doesn't have the homely, magical feel that I'm going for. I would like to keep the red door though.

Witch cabin 2

I like this variation, I think that the the foliage on the roof is an improvement to the type of aesthetic I'm going for. I'm still not sure about the pale colour of the house though, I'd like to try one with a brown base but I don't want it to look like a gingerbread house.

Witch cabin 3

I really like this variation of the witch's cabin and I think it's going to be the colour palette that I'm going to move forward with. It doesn't look like a gingerbread house and it possesses the warmth that I'm going for. I'd like to do a few different shots with the exterior of the house with different colour palette to express different times of day.