Animated Narratives - Week 2

For this weeks theme of shaping stories, i created a short story board from the brainstorming session in class. using the mind map we created I chose to explore the idea of superheroes doing mundane activities.

What interested me particularly with this idea was using the predetermind expectation of known characters and playing with that to create funnny/ironic scnearios. Using the absurdity of a character in contrast to their usual afordance with the audience, was something I pulled from the first week but here in a more humorous take.

The specific example i chose to expand was cyborg working at a desk job. The irony from this is persented within the situation - a character with limitless technological ability working in a relatviely low tech boring job. The blocking of the scene was cearly important here, choosing to reveal parts of the scene which would work well with the added element of timing in animated form.

As an inpiration for this scene, I went to the Incredibles (Pixar, 2004), particularly the scene in which mr Incredible is hunched over a small desk, clearly not fitting in to his surroundigs. I wanted to use a larger character like cyborg but to extend more than just physicality to the situation, by having his abilities themselves be constrained by his environement.

When working through this concept, i experimented with the idea of some more obscure characters such as martian manhunter (who has a fear of fire), working in a kitchen. But realised that for a concept like this to work, there already needs to be an existing affordance, or at least one that is clearly apparent to the viewer, so went with cyborg instead, whos outward apearance is clear to someone who may be unfamiliar with the character.

Downloads:

Download File: cyborgstoryboard.png