Pandemonium is a well known painting by English painter John Martin known mostly for his dramatic and vast depictions of religious scenes and subjects. His painting came from the romanticism period.
Pandemonium was created during the early 1840s taking inspiration from paradise lost, a biblical poem by John Martin. In short it depicts hell.
I have chosen this specific painting mainly due to John Martins skills of compositions, landscape inclusion, and dramatic scenes. This interested me more than other paintings as he depicts scenes/worlds we don’t experience or will never experience. Though the meaning and story behind the painting is different to the story line I am creating I was to point out that everyone has their own version of what hell looks like, and John Martins painting is what closely resembles my imagination.
Many would argue if we live in peaceful times or not. I believe that it’s always a subjective topic as everyone has different experiences. Based on my experiences I would like to think that we live in peaceful chaotic times. Peaceful in the sense that there aren’t major wars taking place around the world, I have a roof over my head, and that I am safe in general. However it’s not so peaceful politically as now we have to be extremely careful what we say, and our opinions can be misinterpreted as hate, or sometimes we choose feelings too much over logic.
in the creation of the animation itself was time consuming, challenging, but also beneficial for my skill and knowledge development. Through my storyboard I knew what I wanted for the animation. I knew what illusions and effects I wanted to include. I had to be realistic here as I needed to think of simple effects I can manage myself and not over complicate it too much. Some of the illusions put into the animation were squash & stretch when I had my main character jumping, slow in/out to show the characters running, timing for the gradual appearance of his disciples, and overlapping of cut outs made from the original painting to add effects such as lava moving, and a humid cloud on top of the castle.
Knowing that I didn’t want to include the original figure from the paintings, Martin’s satan, I used photoshop to remove him out and create an empty world for me to work with.
I created the animation in two parts the opening and the main body. I knew it would simply things for me and my computer to cut it into to because I wasn’t confident enough in my skills to to mess it up. I also included two easter eggs in the opening scene for other John Martin fans out there with two other paintings he has created. However now that I think of it I may have wanted to stick with characters that fit into the hell scene instead of colourful blobs, but at the same time it gives a nice contrast to a hyper-detailed painting and simple characters. Also given the fact that the painting is quite dark in nature I added a fun and cute sign with flowers at the end to up lift the mood.
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