Merry Krampus
This personal project was inspired by the folkloric figure, Krampus and the art surrounding him. I drew from illustrations in postcards and magazines of the late 1800s and contemporary toys and dolls. These cartoonishly evil depictions of Krampus were packed with a wicked sense of humour and personality that I aimed to capture in my work.
The stop motion films of JiÅ™í Trnka and Jan Svankmajer were also hugely influential to this piece through their use of dolls and puppets in depictions of dark and surreal folktales.
I began by creating a mood board of my influences and deciding which of the many depictions of Krampus I wanted to draw from. I was particularly attracted to the more manic depictions featuring a wide smile, long tongue and bulging eyes.​ For the child characters, I drew from Alpine dolls of the 1950s and 60s as their cute simplicity would be a nice contrast to Krampus in addition to fitting with the origins of the folklore.
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I then created a few sketches and concept pieces using Procreate. I kept these loose and gestural, focusing on colour, texture and overall personality. After landing on a style I was happy with, I began creating the characters.
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The more organic features such as the heads were sculpted using Nomad Sculpt, allowing for more intricate details. The other features were modelled and rigged in Blender.
For textures, I once again drew from my moldboard of images. I wanted textures to be somewhat realistic, showing the age and imperfections common to these dolls. I also loved the dolls' vacant expression which I recreated through hand-painted textures that captured their uncanniness, particularly in motion.
The animation was achieved through a combination of 3D techniques and straight-ahead animation. I wanted to capture the jittery imperfection of stop motion by animating certain elements frame by frame, mainly the secondary features like arms and accessories. However, I also wanted the flexibility to adjust my timings and positioning. The main movements were animated pose-to-pose before an additive layer of straight-ahead animation was added allowing me to non-destructively alter the overall animation.
Here is a viewport recording of the animation in progress. Both the modelling and animation was created with the final camera in mind, resulting in a forced perspective that accentuates the poses.
Finally, I added post-production effects inspired by the stop-motion films of the 1960s and 70s that I was inspired by. I also created two square formats for ease of sharing on social media.