The Time Machine: The Early Stages

For this semester's intermediate animation class, the goal is to take a fairy tale or a classic yarn and develop it for a potential animation (feature film, television, or whatever). I chose H.G. Well's THE TIME MACHINE and spent this summer brushing up on my reference by re-reading the 1895 book along with seeing the 1960 and 2002 feature films. I still have to see the 1978 made for television movie which promises to be fairly terrible with the exception of a young Priscilla Barnes (pre-Three's Company).

My goals are to develop it like a feature film based mostly on the book and to stay away from the additions made in the George Pal and Simon Wells movies. The first step in animating it here is to develop some rough idea sketches before I bang them into shape. And that is what is posted here.

The main character is actually never named in the novel. H.G. Wells just refers to him as "The Time Traveller". I'm debating on if I should keep that aspect as well to set it apart from the 1960 and 2002 films which did name the character. The 1960 film alluded that the character's name as H.G. Wells and the movie TIME AFTER TIME from 1979 has the character H.G. Wells using a time machine to track down Jack the Ripper who has gone forward in time.

One of the challenges of this is to also not make it too close to DOCTOR WHO, which, IMO, was probably the best (but loosest) adaption of the Time Machine. I kind of knew that in the back of my head with the use of a time machine but many of the different incarnations of the Doctor played with a retro 1800s look. What really hammered home the Who comparisons was the novel's lack of names for many of the 1895 characters as they are referenced by their title like "the doctor" and "the mayor" or "the psychologist". DOCTOR WHO does the same with their Time Lords usually (but not always) taking up titles like "The Doctor", "The Master", or "The Monk".

Above are my early sketches for the protagonist. I had some other ones as well that were not nearly as successful. I'm thinking that another aspect that might distinguish it from other adaptions is to give it a Steam Punk look, something that is definitely "in" with some cosplayers today. I also knew I want the character to be tall and thin.

One character that did get a name in the novel was Filby, the neighbor. I pictured him as short and round. A good contrast to The Time Traveller. It is tough to get away from the 1960 version of Filby but I do want to incorporate the handlebar mustache, which was popular in 1895, but might not work well for the lead character. That is also Filby at the very top of this post.

The Time Traveller's Eloi friend in the future is Weena. From the novel, I picture her being small, frail, and blonde. I'm going to try for an elf-like quality with the eyes.

The baddies of the novel are the Morlocks. In the novel, they are short and not that strong. There is just a bunch of them always grabbing at the protagonist. I'll make them smaller but want to give them larger upper body muscle since they are laborers. The eyes will be big, sensitive to light, and almost like expanded pupils to let in what small light they have down below (unlike a certain 2002 movie). I'm still playing with designs. I do like the look of the middle one on the right but I have to keep in mind that these creatures are descended from today's human race, just as the Eloi are.

And above is how all these roughly designed characters look compared to each other. But, expect changes.