Background Animation ideas

In last weeks tutorial with Alan, we agreed that to populate the scene, there needs to be 'secondary' or 'generic' characters in the background. These kind of characters, although will probably look the same as my main story characters, they will be dropped in at random places etc. to fill out and populate the scene.

Obviously, they still need to have a reason to be there, so on a lengthy train journey over the weekend, I scribbled up a few stick men figures in certain poses to give me some reference as to what it is some of these background characters can be doing.

Here we have an array of 'activities' being undertaken by the damned! It's pretty hard to make out on here, but we have things such as hanging corpses swinging, impaled souls, cliff divers, whipped souls etc. etc.

This is more for me to have a look at and reference when it comes time to animating said background characters.

I thought I'd also post up a few more of the metaphorical Hell concepts so to break down the final concept into smaller more 'modelling friendly' chunks.

Here we have Ramses wrapped in chains, shrouded by what appear to be children - a metaphor for his sons who died in front of him due to his stubbornness. The similar style is used again for the characters.

In these 2 pieces we have a close up of Sampson 'Sandwiched' between the pillar that he pulled down. I thought this would be more cinematic than just having a limb sticking out of an inanimate pillar. The close up image shows ravens (or not ravens?) feasting upon the helpless corpse - time providing I would like to incorporate little details like these. But we will have to see how well the project is managed before incorporating any 'extras'.

These 2 images, again, are from different distances and perspectives. They show Kane being held in place by chains eternally struggling while a larger more powerful hand (Abel) attacks him. I did initially like this idea, but when reflecting on it, I think having the large hand in the scene, could draw the eye away from other particular elements and therefore I will stick with the original idea of him being flogged by his brother.

I have yet to scan the other images, but will do so after tomorrows tutorial with Alan.