As a first idea, I want to make an animation about wrestling, because wrestling is mostly about big movements, which can easily make some tense animations. My idea is to make an animation about RKO, which will have two characters involved. The first character will quietly enter the ring from the back and use RKO to attack the other character. If time is limited, I will replace the first character with a sandbag.
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I broke down the animation into 19 actions. The ones marked with triangles are minor keyframes, and the ones marked with circles are major keyframes.
Entering the preliminary preparations, I first referred to the story that my FMP was going to tell and rewrote the script. This time, the script of Project 2 mainly tells the story of a woman seeking self-salvation in pain, facing the pressure of life and herself, and being overwhelmed. This is also the problem I have faced for a long time. I often compare the present with the past, and then I am full of fantasies about the future. This is a problem that has always troubled me, and it is difficult not to use external factors to improve myself.
I will divide the entire short film into three time points, that is, three acts. The first act is in a room where the protagonist sits on the sofa by himself, experiencing a painful self-struggle. During this period, I will use alternating editing techniques in the room and the protagonist’s fantasy scenes to show the audience. Then in the second act, I will use the material I shot in reality, which represents the protagonist’s past. In the third act, it is still in the protagonist’s room, but the light is much brighter, and the protagonist stands up and leaves.
Although it is a good idea to bring one’s own experience and emotions into the work you create, it also has disadvantages, such as it is difficult to make the audience empathize, which is a double-edged sword.
This is my moodboard. I used the same moodboard from my FMP, because the tone of the two short films is very similar.
This term, I need to complete another short animation. My idea for this short film is to combine animation with real images, and use the editing method of psychological montage to practice and understand Eisenstein’s definition of montage from a visual level. But I also hope to add the concept of time and space to improve the emotional expression of the entire short film. And I hope to add some new production processes, such as 3D scanning, modeling, and the use of AI. Adding new processes means that I can strengthen my ability to make animations independently and improve my work efficiency when working independently. I will use Hideaki Anno’s movies as my reference.
In “The End of Evangelion”, Hideaki Anno added a lot of realistic shots, which is the direction I want to study.
This is the first time that I have spent so much time improving the storyboard and previs of a script. I spent too much time on the first act because there was a problem with the connection between the first and second acts. I couldn’t connect the two acts well because the time and space span was huge, and the second act I designed was the protagonist’s inner fantasy, so it was a big problem to convert the current scene into the inner scene. Fortunately, I got the help of my mentor and my friends. After hard work, I did my best to make the connection shots. This set of shots is a set of fast montages that can well show the difference between the two scenes and connect them very well.
Then I accelerated the production process. When I was making the second act at the beginning, I always felt that there was a lack of some emotions in it. As a previs, it was difficult to express emotions only by body language and lens language because there was no soundtrack and stage lighting effects, so I tried to make the lighting into my second act scene and kept it until the end. This is also the first time I tried to add lighting animation to previs.
I am quite satisfied with the whole previs, although there are still many areas that can be polished, but I will put this step aside for modification in my FMP. I will use this storyboard and previs to make my FMP.
After I finished designing the character. I was not satisfied with the shots in the first scene, so I redesigned some of the shots in the first scene. I deleted the scene where the protagonist drinks coffee because I felt that this action was not very suggestive and would weaken the tone and emotion of the whole film. I added a lot of empty shots, which can help me tell the background story of the protagonist, such as her photos and the decorations on her bedside.
I remade some shots based on the new storyboard, which can show the audience the background story of the protagonist. Then I made some modifications to the old shots, such as the last shot, I adjusted the camera angle and recomposed it, so that the audience would not be misunderstood when the raindrops fell.
I started to try to make each shot according to my storyboard. I used the character models provided to complete all the shots in the first act. I saved all the shots separately for later modification. According to the feedback from my instructor, some shots were inconsistent with the shot scheduling on the storyboard. For example, the second shot was a side-up perspective on the storyboard, but in the actual shot, I made it a top-down perspective. Including the sixth shot, it was also inconsistent with the storyboard, which would lead to misunderstandings among the audience. This is also what I need to change later.
I started designing characters and gave the protagonist her background story to enrich the character setting.
Besides, I started looking for some images on the internet that I could use as a moodboard, because I had seen Tomasz Artur Bolek’s illustrations before, and his illustrations had a dreamcore feel, so I used his illustrations as my moodboard.
In this part, I continued to improve some of the content of idea3, and I redrew the storyboard of idea3. I continued to improve the whole story, adding some details and shots. The first detail I added was that the protagonist was drinking coffee, which also reminded the audience from the side that the protagonist was working late at night. The unwashed dishes next to him proved that the protagonist’s real life was not satisfactory. The second was that fireworks would start to be set off outside. The protagonist looked up through the window at the fireworks. The camera focused on the window in front of the protagonist, and it was seen that the protagonist looked lost. At this time, raindrops fell on the table. Third, I redrew the whole process of the black shadow appearing, including the image of the black shadow, which was a giant with big eyes, no nose, and mouth. Fourth, I redrew the chase scene and determined the movement and scene arrangement of most shots. Fifth, I made a textual and symbolic description of each shot to determine the scene arrangement.
Story summary: On New Year’s Eve, at 12 o’clock, a young woman was sitting at her desk working. Suddenly, a drop of rain fell on her desk. She looked up and found that she was no longer in her room, but in a dark skyscraper. It was raining in the sky, and she could faintly hear the sound of fireworks exploding. She looked around and suddenly saw a window on a building with a light on. She hurried towards the light. At this time, a black shadow appeared by the window. The black shadow gradually grew larger and broke through the constraints of the building. The black shadow turned into a giant, looked at the protagonist, and reached out to try to grab the protagonist. The protagonist was scared and ran away and fled into a building. The black shadow continued to chase. The protagonist found the fire escape and ran to the roof. Finally, the protagonist successfully reached the roof, and the black shadow also became human-sized, standing in the dark corridor, looking at the protagonist. The protagonist finally plucked up the courage, walked to the side of the black shadow, reached out and grabbed the black shadow’s arm, and pulled the black shadow out. At this time, fireworks were set off in the sky.
This script is my interpretation of Freud and Lacan’s ideas about dreams and reality. I use different things to represent the self, the id and the superego.
Story summary: This story tells the story of a sick mother and her child. At the beginning of the story, the sensible child carries her mother’s lunch and walks towards the mother lying on the bed. The mother sits up despite the pain and praises the child. The second shot is the child squatting in a yard, taking care of a dying flower. The child is very sad because the flower can no longer be saved, and her mother quietly watches all this from the window. In the third scene, the child carries her mother’s meal and walks to her mother as usual. The mother whispers to the child that she wants to give her a gift. When the child sees the gift, she is very happy because it is a dying flower, which is now blooming in a pot. In the fourth scene, the child stands in front of a tombstone, which is her mother’s tombstone. The child personally plants the flower on the grass next to the tombstone. The arrangement of the whole story was created when I was in a very low mood. I am not very satisfied with this tragic ending.
