WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Where The Wild Things Are is a project adapted from the children's story about a boy called Max who travels to a land full of monsters after being bad and is sent to bed with no supper. 

The projects focuses on the life of the author of the book Maurice Sendak and how the monster characters where loosely based on his aunts and uncles who visited him as a child, with yellow teeth and speaking Yiddish so Sendak couldn't understand. 

Focusing on the era Sendak was a child which takes place in 1940's New York, the character designs are adapted from idea that his aunts and uncles transform into the monsters. 

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Concept Statement- 

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When conducting research into Maurice Sendak, who was the author of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ I found out that when he was living in Brooklyn in the 1930’s his Jewish relatives would come to visit. These Aunts and Uncles only spoke Yiddish and would pinch his cheeks and say that he was so cute they could just ‘eat him up’. Their eyes and teeth were yellow and they were often hairy. he and his siblings would often make cruel jokes at their expense. It is from here that he got his inspiration for the Wild Things in his book. For my project I have taken this idea and designed my own Wild Things based on the ideas of using habits and character traits people have and exaggerating them into monster like qualities. I changed the script slightly for my adaptation. There is a scene where Max is sent to bed for being naughty. In my version, his Aunts and Uncles have come to visit and he is sent to bed so the adults can have quiet time without the children. They wear coats and hats because they are just arriving and slowly taking off their hats and costs to come into the house. I looked into thigs that could be exaggerated into monsters, so looking into things such as smoking and knitting as well as figure such as fat and thin and how a child would interpret these. I also wanted the changes made to the characters to be easily changeable, as the characters will appear in an earlier scene as human. So, the change made should be things such as different coats and hats. I want it to be obvious that they are the family members from earlier that have changed into monsters by a child’s imagination