Animated Narratives Week 4 s3766325 Xincheng Wang

Story

In the deep ocean, we see a school of fish, but one of them seems unhappy, swim slowly, and soon falls behind. It swims straight up and soon rises to the surface. The sun is shining on the sand, and he looks enviously at people running and playing on the beach, longing for life beyond the ocean. Suddenly, it notices its old friend crab on the beach. The crab can swim in the water and crawl on the land. He is very envious about the crab’s ability. The fish has been asking his friend the Crab for advice on how to walk on the shore. But this time, instead of teaching him as usual, its old friend advised it to give up, because it is too difficult to learn to walk without long legs. After saying goodbye to the crab, the fish makes up its mind to ask the wizard octopus of the sea, hoping that the magic octopus could help it grow a pair of legs. The octopus agrees and gives it a new pair of human legs. The fish is so happy that he swims to the shore and tries to walk on land. But when the people on the earth see such a freak coming out of the sea, they are frightened and run away, and soon there is no one on the large beach. The fish walked and runs, leaving its footprints in the sand. The setting sun shines on this half-human fish, and its elongated shadow on the beach is even weirder. Suddenly, a harpoon flies up to the poor fellow that is about enjoying life on land and sticks in its body. The monster falls, bleeding on the sand that mixed with sunshine, creating the most extraordinary sight ever seen. The next day, the TV news shows this poor guy that has been sent to the museum for exhibition. It turns out that a fisherman thought it was some strange fish he had never seen before, so he threw a harpoon to catch it. When he got closer, he was surprised to find that the fish had a pair of human legs. The man in front of the TV turns it off and shouts at the child, "Don't go to the beach!’

Reflection

In this work which combines storyboard and short script, I examine the idea of externalizing characters’ mental activities. ‘ A fish wants to go out of water’ is the wiki premise I chose for this week’s exploring object. Through the painting, I focus on the facial expressions, actions and scene portray that reflects the personalities of a character in some ways, especially for anthropomorphizing animals, such as the setting sunshine implies the fish’s miserable ending. My reference work is Finding Nemo (2003), by Pixar Studios, which also use anthropomorphized fishes as main characters, in the shark scene, the ocean water turn dark, which implies the character’s fear inside. Further, I found the intensions and obstacles’ significant function in a good story, just as Aron Sorkin described in his masterclass trailer (2020): ‘ That’s what creates friction and tension and that is what drama is. If you don’t have that then it’s journalism.’  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA0F6U9GtJ4