Oops, all allegory!
Another post on metaphorical journeys into the subconscious
Very similar to last week’s post, here is another ancient concept art I did for a story about an allegorical journey into the subconscious mind; however, this time the illustration was part of a bigger animation project from someone else. I just contributed some ideas for the art direction and overall look of it.
In the end, the project fizzled out and was abandoned in early development. If I remember correctly (this was also about ten years ago), the plot was that of “Alice in Wonderland”, but the ‘real-world’ Alice was confined in a sanatorium. Back then it immediately jumped out to me how incredibly similar the idea was to the video games “American McGee’s Alice” and “Alice: Madness Returns”, the second one being one of my favourite games ever, gorgeously designed, imaginative, managed to make a colourful world in a very dark setting and disturbing story; the way each character and place represented a part of the tragic narrative is effective and elegant, it has been a big influence on my own work. You can see the throughline of my interests: psychology, fantastical tales, metaphors, and allegories with rich symbolism.
I am not sure how the end project would have looked if we had continued development. The overall tone of the story was somber, and I wonder how we could have made it our own. “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” have been adapted and re-imagined a million times, and turning them into a dark tale of psychological horrors is a popular take, which makes it even more of a challenge to adapt when there is so much material to compare it to.
But to me, the randomness of the story was never scary, but kind of liberating. There was so much freedom in weird things happening that didn’t make sense, a book with no plot, just a dream following dream logic. I identified less with Alice, feeling I was just another inhabitant of Wonderland. I enjoy the books and the Disney film very much. When the Tim Burton’s version was released, I was so disappointed. My then-boyfriend loved it, precisely because it had a plot, an arc, a beginning, a middle, and a nicely wrapped-up end. He DID find randomness and chaos scary, thinking Wonderland was more a nightmare than a dream, even with all the bright colours. So I get where this sense of unease comes from, which lends itself to a gothic and dark interpretation, but if I ever decide to make my own version, I’d like to show the audience that, although chaos can be scary, it is full of possibilities.
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