Hot Waters – Final Animatic

This animatic is based on the news article about a woman who poured hot water on another woman. I chose to tell the story from her lawyers’ POV, when they meet the woman for the first time.

Final Animatic

Inspiration

The art direction is kept very simple with rough linework and blocky colours, inspired by a short film from Tokyo University of the Arts. (アニメーション「就活狂想曲」GEI DAI ANIMATION “Recruit Rhapsody”). In terms of characters, HERO Season 2 provided a good reference point for me to start building my characters.


Characters

I started by coming up with basic character bios for the three characters. The difficult part was creating personalities that clash to provide interesting interaction. I find that after establishing basic qualities and moving straight to character design helped visualise the personalities of the characters better for further adjustment.

Working Storyboards / Script

Initially, I worked from storyboards. However I realised that my animatic was going to be driven by dialogue, which made the storyboarding process very difficult since I had no idea what my characters were saying. So I created a script. This part of the process took up the most time, and it was also the most challenging part of the entire assignment. In the end, I did not adhere to most of my working storyboards, and I cut some parts from the script to not make the animatic too draggy.

In the story, I intended to show

  • Why the investigations and trials are taking so long over such a small matter -Possibly because of Ms. Wani’s personality
  • How Ms. Wani blew up the situation over something small
  • Her possible “lies”
  • How the lawyers are handling her situation (Not very well)

Click here for HotWaters script.

Visuals

There are two flashbacks in this sequence. To distinguish the two settings better, I used a different colour palette for the flashback scene. For the lawyer’s conference room, I used a blue – green colour scheme.  For the flashbacks, I use a purple – pink colour scheme. This is why Ms. Wani’s colour scheme feels out of place in the conference room scenes. The colours of her clothes and hair are matched with her “flashback” to show that that is her “world”.

Lawyer’s conference room.
Flashback 1.
Flashback 2.

 

Towards the end, we see one of the lawyers losing patience, as shown through the feet tapping. We don’t know who it is, as the colours of their pants and shoes are intentionally made the same. It is revealed at the last frame that Cody was the one who burst, even though he seemingly kept his cool throughout. I wanted to show how frustrated the lawyers are with the case.

 


Assignment 3: Storyboarding

Story: The moment the ship hits the shore, the Prince signal his men to follow him into the forest to investigate the mysterious noise. They find a huge yellow toad that speaks English. Then, a lion appears. The guard exlaims that it is a tiger. The Advisor and the Prince shake their head and laugh at the Guard for being ignorant, and explained that it was a lion, not a tiger.

Project 1B: Twisted Fables

THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF

IDEA

In the first image, I initially intended to portray a wise Wolf who knows of the lying shepherd-boy and decides to teach the Shepherd a lesson by attacking the sheep. But some people misinterpreted it as an arrogant looking into having some fun by purposefully attacking the sheep.

In the second image, I wanted to show the villagers offering the wolf some meat — as if to suggest that the whole story was an “inside job”. The first image would then suggest that the Wolf is actually smarter than he seem. I went along with the interpretation that the wolf might be trying to have some fun by purposefully attacking the sheep in the story.

The first image accompanied by the second image would reveal the fact that the villagers are the ones plotting against the Shepherd. They bribe the Wolf with meat to attack the sheep. This would give the Wolf the motivation to attack the Shepherd’s sheep.

Choices

I used a darker colour scheme for the second image to hint that something shady is going on and to give contrast with the first image. The single spotlight is to bring viewer’s attention to the action of the characters.

PULP FICTION: semiotics & mise en scène

PULP FICTION by Quentin Tarantino

 

Mise en scène is used in this scene to warn the audience of upcoming events and inform them about hidden character traits to create suspense when Vincent goes to visit Mia in her house. Mia is the wife of Marsellus Walace.

Setting

The colour scheme of the house is mainly white — very clean and crisp. White is usually a symbol of innocence and purity. However in this case is ironic because Mia and Mr. Wallace the complete opposite (drug addict and mob boss). The juxtaposition of colour scheme and personality is interesting. Every furniture is neatly placed, the setting seems uncomfortable to be in.

Lighting

High key front lighting accentuates stark white colour scheme, which makes the character stand out.

Props

We see technological devices around their home — intercoms, video cameras — which suggest that characters in living in the house (Mia and Marsellus Wallace) are wealthy. It gives viewers a hint of their personalities and lifestyle. It can also suggest that characters have something to hide — a sign of insecurity.

Costume

Vincent is in a black suit which makes him stand out in the white environment. It suggests that he does not belong in the environment and foreshadows the fact that something bad might happen if he stays in the environment for long.

Space

Director makes use of deep space. Vincent appears very small in the large room, as if entering a lion’s den.

Staging and Acting

Vincent’s pose conveys a sense of  inferiority. He is cautious and keeping to himself.

Project 1A: Twisted Fables

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

For this assignment, we were to create a single image that changes the meaning of a famous fable or folktale.

ideaTION

The story that I picked was The Boy Who Cried Wolf. In the original story, the shepherd-boy alarms the villagers three or four times by crying out “Wolf!”, and laughs at them for believing him. The Wolf really did come in the end.

For this image I wanted to change the moral of the story by making the Wolf be more involved in this narrative. At first, I wanted to portray an evil Wolf who knows of the lying shepherd-boy and decides to have some fun by purposefully attacking the sheep. I personally find this a reflection of our society, whereby sometimes people in the sidelines might take advantage of the situation to cause you misfortune.

Final

 In my final piece, I wanted to show a wise Wolf, who decides to attack the sheep in order to teach the boy a lesson. The message that I was trying to bring across was that in life “a bad guy” might appear to cause you “misfortune” at that point in time, but in reality wants to help you become a greater person.

In order for the Wolf to do this, he has to know that this shepherd boy is doing such an awful thing. Which is why I placed the Wolf behind a tree, listening. The Wolf is in a arms-crossed pose to convey its wise/cool aura.

Evaluation

The pose of the wolf was not effective in what I wanted to convey. A lot of people misinterpreted it as being arrogant. The Wolf also did not have good character motivation for his actions.

A different situation might have worked better in this case.