2021/10/6

The establish of concept design, finalise the story with my group mate.

following concept design

But finally, we decided to make another story.

https://padlet.com/dsong01202011/fmp-padlet-yq932xi7bznur5i7

↑all the group development is on this padlet.

Storyboarding:

Sound test:

In this project, I collaborate with my teammate Coco( Tiantian Mai) and Eleanor from Guildhall School of Drama. We created the work themed Micro-aggressive, which disclosed the subtle hostility that exists in interpersonal communication, and show the harm that this malice causes to people. ( What are micro-aggressions and micro-invalidations) My understanding is, this unit is an introspection into reality problem which is common in school life. Depicting and presenting such problems, helps the audience begin to think about how to face and dispel them. This will help to embed an inclusive culture in the school.

·The establish of the overall style of the project & concept design
Brain storm:
When first conceiving this project, Coco and I agreed that perhaps the protagonist of the story should be referred into general, rather than limited to a particular group. The term micro-aggressive refers to a subtle exclusivity, this exclusion is often seen when someone is marginalized and stigmatized by an established group when he first tries to integrate into it. It manifests in the form of neglect, exclusion, and isolation.

When people face such subconscious prejudices, the negative feeling of self-doubt, and self-denial, will accumulate over time. At the same time, the damage they cause to the person is also cumulative, so he has to compromise and change himself for fitting in the group, but negatively. This may even cause by the traits and habits of the person that do not conform to the group’s ‘majority’. These traits may be about gender, race, nationality, language, or hobbies.

Research & Character design:
So we didn’t want our character to be confined to these qualities (factors). We wanted to convey that this is a fact that everyone may encounter and face. Then the audience can aware of the importance of it.

Then we explored a better way to express our concept through communication and gathering materials. We intend to combine various materials to create an experimental animation. The main character was designed as a paper figure. Because we believe that paper the medium is easy to shape and easy to be influenced. It can be folded and painted in various colors, which fits perfectly with an image of ‘to be handled and treated’. It also implies a metaphor: the newcomer is the unshaped person, and the process of integration and compliance of micro-aggressive is the process of being shaped by the majority and becoming one of them.

We believe that we can visualize the effects and damage that the character receives. This is a common technique used in animation to exaggerate the emotions of a character. Because the subject is a paper figure, we want to cut, stitch and dye the body to represent the ‘accumulated pain’ of the person.

Concept design:
I designed this concept art for the animation, which set the overall art style and tone: A paper person, in the middle of chaos and confusion, is overwhelmed by the tumors surrounding his body, symbolizing ‘being affected’ and ‘being hurt’.

(I found the reference with Coco, and I drew the concept illustration)

Narrative concept & story board design:
At the beginning of the storyboard design, we set up a variety of different windows. Each window represents a group of people and their style is different. Like dancers with glamorous outfits or bandsmen with a rocking percussive style. The protagonist walks between the windows and is influenced by a variety of cultures. This influence is visually embodied, sewing into the protagonist’s body as he walks, and different colors are applied to his body. The protagonist shows reactions of rejection, but these are accepted by him by default.

As he walks and experiences, these influences begin to gradually expose and destroy him. He starts unable to withstand the cumulative damage and becomes like a monster which unable to be self-consistent with the vast and complex volume of socializing. He is also unsure how to establish himself in such chaos. Our first edition is designed to tell such a story.

These are our animatic test:

(The first video was shot by me and Coco,the idea was Coco’s.The second shot was designed by me and the third drop shot was Coco’s idea, and I drw it.)

·After tutorials and the feedback after the first presentation
Overall assessment
The plot is not very understandable
The overall re-working
(1. Addition of stage design)
(2. Redesign of the storyboard)
The combination of live-action scenes and animation style
Copyright restrictions on AI technology
The design of the montage of live-action shots
↑(on the presentation and realization of embodiment)

During the weekly tutorials and discussions with the teacher, we obtained the following advices and modifications:

1. Our understanding of micro-aggressive is relatively biased compared to the teacher’s. The teacher and the client wanted to define this kind of hidden bullying as something more specific than a general reference to ‘being influenced’. It could be verbal taunts, questioning, and sarcasm in the eyes, or ignoring in behavior. The inclusion of these would make the play more readable, clearer, and more specific.
2. The teacher approved of our design for the characters and overall style and encouraged us to present our work using integrated materials and experimental animation expressions. This style was unique and can show a new form of the theme.
3. The teacher suggested that we could write some key words to help us understand micro aggressive on different levels, step by step, and suggested that it was important to show a sense of contrast between before and after the character was affected, so as to show the substantial harm caused by the micro-aggressive.

Modifications:
Taking the above feedback, we have retained the overall stylistic tone and the design of the paper figures and have achieved further developments.

We have established these three keywords: Alienates Dehumanize Destroy. We intended to stage the whole story in three acts, with each act corresponding to each keyword. This would reflect the cumulative and progressive nature of the impact of micro-aggressive on people and give the plot a sense of progression. Meanwhile, the style also fits in with the traits of music and opera.

Our redesigned storyboard as follows:
In terms of the plot, this is a person’s attempt to fit into a collective.

And this is our presentation version animation:

(AI animation and background design part was done by Coco, and I design the character. We all try to make animation, and we took the real-shot together in Guildhall school.)

·The second presentation & feedbacks
The stage design is a good idea and could be retained
Too much of a mish-mash of things to understand the plot
The design is good but needs to be more focused on the theme
Might try some specific text to make it more readable

Taking these suggestions together, I have redesigned the entire second act. I wanted to focus on the imagery of the main character being stared at, being scrutinized, and to use specific words to reflect the questioning of those around him. This led to the design of images such as:

And used punchy colors, constantly shaking, sometimes sharp lines to reflect the main character’s inner ripples. I also wrote out the words of the people around me and animated the text to shake and become fluid through AE to show this. The words flow into a pool of water in which the protagonist struggles and eventually sinks.

At the end of this edition, the feedback from the teachers became much more positive; the text conveys attitudes and emotions succinctly and powerfully, and the use of text animation is the right strategy.

(These optimizes are made by myself, the stage is build by me and Coco, and we film it together.)
Our final outcome(without music)is here:

In fact, at first, I was quite ambitious about this project, and many interesting ideas came to mind. During the sketch process, Coco and I kept communicating and discussing, and conceived many things: For example, we wanted to draw the inner conflict of the main character as a monster, and we wanted to design some windows to represent different identities of people. Although it was a joyful process to document and experiment with all of these in the brainstorming stage, it was still difficult to put them into the work because they were disorganized and unstructured. We had to go through a lot of deletions. But these interesting designs were able to sink into our minds as experience, and we learned how to structure the story more strategically and logically to make it accessible to the readers.

These are some of the deleted scraps and Settings:

I choose the second sound clip.
this is a conversation between an adult and a little girl.

This is also a simple,childish exploration of life.

The whole story is set in an amusement park.

I wish the whole background in a warm color hue, give people a sense of dream core.

As for the overall style of the animation, I wanted to fit in with this childlike dialogue. Therefore, I have adopted a child’s drawing style to show it. The background design and the character design are not so conventional but have a childish feel to them. I think this design will be more impressive.

Because I wanted to make the setting more interesting, I designed the adult as a death.He is such a figure in a cloak with a scythe.

But this is a character who is able to be patient and talk to children, so in my mind he is a more gentlemanly character, a nice adult. So in addition to giving him some elements of death, I still drew him with a tie and lovely features.

The design of the little girl would be relatively plain, but I just used an oval head and a triangular body to make her look cuter.

My whole story involves two scenes. The first is an amusement park where two characters have a conversation, and the other is a shop described by the girl’s mouth.

The scene of shop involves taking over from the previous storyboard. The girl’s teeth become a door curtain and the girl’s tonsils become a light bulb. The scene starts at the “o” syllable of the word “shop” and then closes quickly as the “p” syllable appears.

5/5/2022

X-sheet

final story board

20/2/2022

This week we started our visual narrative course, the topic of which was portrait collage.

In Monday’s class we were exposed to experimental animation for the first time. That is to say, animating with different materials such as clay, cardboard, magazines, celluloid panels etc. As an exercise we tried to make a loop de loop of animals (e.g. cat, bird, horse movement loop).

In Tuesday’s session, we learnt about ways of assessing and appreciating portraits. And try to analyse a picture by ourselves.

In addition, we were shown a number of excellent experimental animated short films and were also asked to pick a favourite to write an analysis of. The details are as follows.

During the class activity on Friday we did the exercise of drawing our heads. The first set of exercises was to draw multiple small heads by summarising the features of a human face as quickly as possible. The second set of exercises was to try to represent your self-portrait with the materials around it.