Among the big challenges of "Jonah" is that of figuring out how to do the fish scenes. For this script, it's not just a matter of a whale quickly swallowing Jonah and then spitting him out three days later on shore. The scriptures tell us that the Lord "prepared a great fish" to swallow up Jonah (Jonah 1:17). So we're taking a little license with that to develop this subplot story of Humphrey, an oversized fish who doesn't fit in and wishes he could be like the other fish. Over the course of the story, he'll come to realize that there is a reason the Lord made him the way he is.
Originally, we were thinking of doing those sections as animation. But the Humphrey story constitutes a fair chunk of the script. Kids these days are raised on amazing animation, and that isn't cheap (budget for "The Incredibles," for example, was over $90 million). There are less costly ways to do animation, but if it doesn't look good, then it can detract from the story.
At one point, I wrote a draft that omitted the fish story entirely, figuring that if we can't do that part of the story right, then perhaps best not to do it at all. I called it "Jonah & the Ninevites." I shared it around with some people here. Nobody was too excited about it.
Then I saw some clips from the Broadway version of "The Little Mermaid." And it reminded me of how we handled the lions in "Daniel & the Lions," where the faces of the actors were prominently featured and helped define their animal characters. And it made me realize that that approach is much more "Liken." We need to figure out a way to make our actors characters shine through and stage the underwater scenes of "Jonah" as if it were a stage production (which we hope someday it will be).
So we brought in Brian Higginson, who has helped us with the graphics of much of our Liken work of late, and we brainstormed some ideas. He went away for a couple of days and came back this week with some rough concept sketches, which you see here. We went over them, talked about what we liked and disliked, and he is now working on refinements, which should be coming soon.
I know concept sketches are one thing, and actually making those into real costumes is another. But I like the direction this is heading.
Among the big challenges of "Jonah" is that of figuring out how to do the fish scenes. For this script, it's not just a matter of a whale quickly swallowing Jonah and then spitting him out three days later on shore. The scriptures tell us that the Lord "prepared a great fish" to swallow up Jonah (Jonah 1:17). So we're taking a little license with that to develop this subplot story of Humphrey, an oversized fish who doesn't fit in and wishes he could be like the other fish. Over the course of the story, he'll come to realize that there is a reason the Lord made him the way he is.
Originally, we were thinking of doing those sections as animation. But the Humphrey story constitutes a fair chunk of the script. Kids these days are raised on amazing animation, and that isn't cheap (budget for "The Incredibles," for example, was over $90 million). There are less costly ways to do animation, but if it doesn't look good, then it can detract from the story.
At one point, I wrote a draft that omitted the fish story entirely, figuring that if we can't do that part of the story right, then perhaps best not to do it at all. I called it "Jonah & the Ninevites." I shared it around with some people here. Nobody was too excited about it.
Then I saw some clips from the Broadway version of "The Little Mermaid." And it reminded me of how we handled the lions in "Daniel & the Lions," where the faces of the actors were prominently featured and helped define their animal characters. And it made me realize that that approach is much more "Liken." We need to figure out a way to make our actors characters shine through and stage the underwater scenes of "Jonah" as if it were a stage production (which we hope someday it will be).
So we brought in Brian Higginson, who has helped us with the graphics of much of our Liken work of late, and we brainstormed some ideas. He went away for a couple of days and came back this week with some rough concept sketches, which you see here. We went over them, talked about what we liked and disliked, and he is now working on refinements, which should be coming soon.
I know concept sketches are one thing, and actually making those into real costumes is another. But I like the direction this is heading.
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