Bezhin Lea
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
Written by Ivan Turgenev in 1852
This is my graduation work 2022-2024
Made with Procreate, Adobe Photoshop, Toonboom Harmony and Adobe Premier
Sketches from a Hunter's Album is an 1852 cycle of short stories by Ivan Turgenev. Bezhin Lea is one of them. This work is part of the Russian realist tradition, which makes the narrator an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. Turgenev based many of these short stories on his own observations while hunting at his mother's estate at Spasskoye, where he learned of the abuse of the peasants and the injustices of the Russian system that constrained them.
Bezhin Lea - brief retelling:
The narrator gets lost in the woods and comes across a meadow, where he meets up with five peasant boys near a fire who are guarding the horses. The narrator pretends to be asleep and the boys forget he is there and start talking about mythical stories that they believe to be true. The beauty of the story is typically found in the innocence of the young boys. Serfdom here is hidden in the background, never truly mentioned or argued against as in the other stories.
The task was to visualise a story - think over a script, develop characters, compositions, colorscripts of the whole story and in the end make a short draft animation or storyboard to sum up a year and a half of work.
AnimatiŃ
In this video I wanted to show the beginning of the story - the main character leaving his estate to go hunting. He doesn't notice his servants or beautiful nature around - it's too insignificant, he puts himself above it all. But he will pay for his actions - because no one should upset the balance of the world we live in.
P.S. Everything in this video was made by me including music.
P.S. Everything in this video was made by me including music.
Bezhin Lug draft animation
