Rationale
Following the traditional methods of animating from preproduction to production, I developed the script and produced some initial character sketches in week 2, also refining my project pitch and statement of intention. As I was building a narrative storyline based on an ancient Chinese poem and the poem itself uses descriptions of the environment to depict the sadness and desolation of the poet as a refugee entering a peaceful city, metaphors could be a great focal point of my script/ project. In addition, I was considering using delightful images to depict sadness and desolation.
Context
The project would sit within the field of traditional 2D animation, which tells a story from one protagonist’s viewpoint. Related practitioners such as White Cat Legend and a short animation trailer by Hushuo(refer to project pitch) are also set under a similar historical period in ancient China and have the similar styles I wanted to achieve as an outcome of my project.
Method
While I was writing the script, I roughly looked at the structure of a script. I considered adding one dialogue at the beginning of the story, of a passenger, asking the protagonist whether he was new to the city and taking refugee from the rebellion, in order to give the audience some basic information about the background and contrast the following storyline.
Reflection
The very early version of my story contains two characters, a poet waking up in the cabin of his boat next to the Maple bridge, encountering a river spirit who took him down into the water and travelling through destroyed buildings and living creatures, to reflect the influence of the rebellion. However, in this way, the sense of the contents in the original poem was kinda lost, thus, I changed the story to the poet recalling his life at home, seeing the beautiful night views and feeling sad, in which the new storyline corresponded to the poem a bit more.
