IOL_week010_S2_2022

Week 10 New Scenes

IOL_week010_S2_2022

Context： This week's theme was to discover and refine it myself. As I looked at the whole film and the pre-design process, I realised that I had done a very detailed design of the main character, but that character didn't appear as often in the final animation. Through consultation with the tutor at Studio2, they mentioned that they would also love to see my character in the whole film more often. So I decided to create a few suitable sequences to draw the character's anxiety and anger from the outside, combined with the inner abstract animation to show the full range of the animated character's emotions throughout the animation. By adding some 'realistic' footage, the meaning of the inner abstract animation could be better understood in light of developments in the 'real' world. I set out to do this in the original story version, but in the later revisions, I cut these sequences to take into account time constraints and the need to preserve the highlights, and I am now going along with this idea to add some scenes.

This week's experimental clip：https://youtu.be/WxBnSE_lIjI

Reflective text:

During the week, I took the opportunity to set the theme myself by IOL and I chose to add some new scenes to it. Because even though I created a more detailed character design, she doesn't take up a large part in the animation. So I could add some shots there about the main character. Because before that, I divided the work into two main parts, one part was the realistic part and the other part was the abstract animation part. The second part was more semiotic symbolism to express the protagonist's impatience. At first, I wanted to keep this part of the animation wholly isolated from the 'real world, because I was pleased with their transitions. However, through constant testing, towards the end of the term, I realised that the continuous shifts would make it impossible for people to react to the story that the clip would tell.

Firstly, I adjusted the speed of the whole animation, mainly by pausing the first frame of a new shot when it appeared, and then continuing at the same pace. The speed profile is now more like a rollercoaster, slowing to the top with a short pause, then a sharp dive, then another short pause after reaching another apex, and finally another dive. By doing this, the brief stops give the viewer a reaction time to familiarise themselves with the following subject matter, or to understand the symbol. Then, with the high-speed transitions, they will be able to understand the sequence and what I am trying to say without being overwhelmed by the dazzling and fast-paced transitions.

Secondly, I created some more clips of the main character, the heart racing, the scalp tingling, and her losing her head images. Traffic melting is no longer a simple two-part animation, 'real world' - 'abstract sensation' - 'real world. ' in three simple stages. Instead, the 'abstract sensations' are repeatedly inserted into the real-world flashbacks by jumping across the 'abstract sensations', which makes the animation more interesting. As the abstract feeling changes, the protagonist in the 'real world' will also behave differently.

Related work

Alcohol Child (2020), Liang Shang. Xiao Liu, Zixuan Wang  

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1QV411U7v1?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click

Alcohol Child is an animation about Chinese drinking culture. A father who has recovered from a long illness takes his child to a party hosted by his best friends in his honour, but people keep persuading him to drink in great fun. The child is very anxious because drinking is not for his father, who has just recovered. So in his extreme anxiety, he downed the wine and after drinking, everyone turned into demons and monsters.

Some of the episodes of this animation are similar to mine in that the author doesn't exactly just depict the child's imagination as he goes into a drunken state. Instead, the author inserted the child's expressions and reactions, which helped the audience to link the two parts more effectively. At first, I wasn't sure if it was the right choice to include the protagonist's honest reactions in the abstract section. As I couldn't predict how they would work and time was running out, after seeing Alcohol Child, I thought it might be a good choice. So, I chose to continue with the IOL Week 10 project that I had long thought about. The result wasn't that bad.

Sparky (2018), Dian Liang

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV19441167EY?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click

Sparky is an experimental animation that took the author two years to draw, and every frame and line of the film is hand-drawn by the author. The content of this short film is based on the streets he used to walk on during his childhood in primary school and depicts what he sees and hears in a childlike expression. The animation does an excellent job of bridging and contrasting the real world with the world as seen by the child through the child's point of view. Including a few shots of the ordinary world in a world demonised by the child will allow the viewer to better understand what this is trying to say. These shots are more like some story references. Throughout the animation, Sparky is hugely creative, the pacing is slow, and the drawings are magical, but it gives you the urge to want to watch it all. I think some of the 'real world' shots are useful for the progression of such fantasy animation.