Project Folly - ''The Doctor is Also a Patient''

EDIT 12/31/13 12:13pm: Got the basic colors in now. That red, which I feel I MUST use, made coordinating REALLY difficult. Hopefully, adding the shading and shadows will help meld the foreground to the background.

EDIT 02/06/14 8:11pm: Finally realized that my coloring job screwed it up, so I changed it back, plus cropped out that huge table. His emotion needs to be center of this creepy piece.

[More concept art & about "Project Folly"]

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Hmm, now that I'm all done with this, I think I want to go back and add a pair of spectacles dangling from his left hand...

This is the lead character in "Project Folly", a steampunk short film I'm making with some family and friends. He's an MD/engineer who scrapes together low-cost prosthetic limbs out of junk for people. He is seldom seen not wearing a pair of heavy leather gauntlets, which used to only be for protection from sharp edges and electric shocks while he worked on other people, but now help him to keep this awful secret.

I'm labeling Project Folly with the genre 'Sci-Fi Noir', but as you can see here it has elements of 19th-Century Horror. (Except the tomato pin cushion is kind of a joke.....one does not use sewing pins in any credibly form of surgery. ) Unfortunately, I'm drawing inspiration from a movie that none of my cast like, but that I'm secretly crazy about, "Marry Shelly's Frankenstein". I wonder how it will go over when they find or figure it out...?

Besides that, ever since my bro modeled my Deus Ex HR sunglasses papercraft, I've thought the next Deus Ex hero should have a ponytail. So, I'm super excited that Project Folly's storyline is allowing my bro (who got me into Deus Ex, and is playing this character) and I to go there on our own.

I actually half built that arm (a working puppet-arm out of nothing but metal coat hangers!) before drawing this. The arm sketch isn't detailed because the real thing still needs a lot of work, but imo it's crucial that it look like the arm of a brass skeleton. The final prop will either be cut from sheet-brass, or 3D-printed with Shapeways and painted brass.

Since most of my cast, including my bro here, haven't had ANY acting experience, I think I'm going to have to storyboard pretty much everything Disney style so that everyone can SEE what the heck I'm blabbering about during filming. (I myself will be behind the camera.) Were I to merely say, "Look serious," and in my mind mean the face in this picture, I'm sure we'd end up with just the opposite.... But pictures are like a universal language... I'm taking all possible precautions, because giving and taking direction when the time comes is going to be frustrating for all of us.