AN Week 4

This is the Week 4 submission for Animated Narratives.

Week 4

Prompt: The butterfly wants to date the spider. -(Vian)

Bullet Points:

• A very young caterpillar and spider become friends as they don’t have any other immediate family or know anyone else.
• They grow up together and get to know each other better.
• As they grow and learn more about themselves, the caterpillar wants to learn how to and be good at making web like the spider.
• As they grow up, the spider finds more of his kind, and learns more about himself.
• The caterpillar doesn’t get this opportunity with her kind and feels left out.
• Her internal conflict about not being able to make web intensifies.
• The spider has an internal conflict of his own as his new friends keep suggesting that he and the caterpillar can never be together.
• Meanwhile, the caterpillar undergoes a change of her own and evolves into a butterfly.
• As the butterfly and the spider explore her new evolution, they find out that the butterfly can’t sit on the spider’s web, something they did very often when they spent time together.
• They find a solution to this as the butterfly uses her cocoon on the web to sit next to the spider.
• With this new development, the spider’s friends are even more dissatisfied and now want to eat the butterfly.
• Unhappy about the fact that his friends can’t accept him the way he is, the spider decides to make a change.
• The butterfly and the spider promise each other to find out more about themselves and each other together.
• They decide to ‘elope’.
• The butterfly picks up the spider on her back and they fly away into the sunset.

This work examines a story about characters in a relationship with a need. It also explores what they think and feel inside.

I used bullet points to tell this story simply cause they can be used to express it in the way it needs to be expressed, in the form of animation. As a story is being told about a butterfly and spider, I think it’s fair to say the action of the characters in their situation is enough to convey to humans what they mean. And what better medium than animation in this case.

A shorter version of this story was constructed during the group activity of the class this week. We were extremely impressed and inspired by the short animated film shown in class called Lost & Found (2018). Though this ending is a lot more ‘Disney’ like, it is clear how we were inspired by Lost & Found.I also think coming up with this story with my peers in class was one of the most fun activities during this class. Which is probably why I stuck with this story and decided to elaborate on it during this submission. I also believe an animation style similar to Lost & Found would really help convey the emotions better, even though the pacing of the two stories are very different. This would have a much more 'montage' feel to it as it needs to be fast and crisp. The goal is to tell more in a shorter period of time.