For our second project for Foundation 4D I: Story about a Thing, we are supposed to choose… well, a THING as a theme and create a visual narrative surrounding it using sequential images. In class, we also learned about narrative structure and story-telling techniques using images such as scene-to-scene and action-to-action closure to fill in the blood in the gutter.

 

My first task was to select a thing (as if it wasn’t the hardest task ever; sometimes the simplest briefs are the hardest). I decided to use something wacky and bizarre because solemn stories aren’t really my thing.

So, I chose a wig.

 

Yes, a wig.

 

My initial story plan was inspired by this game that I found on Kongregate.com a long time ago, The Visitor by James Ziebarth. It follows the storyline of this alien worm-looking creature that starts off really small, but goes around people’s houses devouring larger and larger prey until it grows to maximum size. The plan was a horror genre and I wanted to make my wig consume people, but I felt that the horror genre is a tad bit grotesque to do and doesn’t really have an interesting storyline to it, so I decided to change it to a comedic story instead.

Instead of having a completely evil wig that murders people, I decided to change it into a yandere wig. ‘Yandere’ is a character archetype in a lot of Japanese animated films that are often girls that are so obsessed with a boy that they would kill for them, or just carry out violent acts in general that also endangers the lives of everyone around them.

Popular examples of ‘yandere’ girls:

Yes, I wanted to make my wig an obsessive protagonist.

So here is my rough storyline using the monomyth structure:

A CEO of a company who starts off with a head full of luscious thick hair starts to bald for unknown reasons (presumably stress or old age), and since maintaining his image and his dignity is really important to him, he thinks of the immediate solution of getting a toupee (as inspired by the Principal in Captain Underpants). He hesitates for a bit when he thinks that it might fall off and his colleagues would laugh at him, but he decides that his image is much more important so he goes to get the toupee anyway.

Little does he know, the toupee has a mind of its own and develops a liking for its owner. They spend time together as the protagonist goes about his days concealing his bald spot with his newly bought toupee.

One fine day, he sees an advertisement on the television for a hair growth cream and has an epiphany. He purchases the cream and successfully manages to grow back a full head of hair, much to the obsessed toupee’s dismay.

The now desperate toupee decides to take superglue and put it on …itself (?? shall not assume gender here) and awaits its master’s arrival.

When the protagonist puts the sticky toupee onto his head, he is appalled to find out that he can’t take it out again. Left with no other choice, he decides to shave off all his hair. The ending twist is that he buys another toupee which has a life of its own. And so the cycle continues.

————————————————————————————————-

Now I know what you’re thinking after you’ve just read this.

Wtf???

Good, that’s the intended effect.

Now it was obviously a terribly hard task to find a bald man to act for me so I decided to substitute the human protagonist to a squash instead. I was inspired by PotterPuppetPal’s Neville Longbottom (below):

I supposed this would create a much more comical effect since the story itself is pretty silly.

 

Below was my rough plan for the sequence of my images:

1- Potato going to work, show status at work

has full head of hair (gelled backwards) (end of a day at work)

2-Potato puts down bag at home and goes to toilet

3- Toilet: Potato discovers that its hair is falling out (more and more hair on the floor/clogged in sink)

4- Potato’s distress over hair (bald spot)

5- Potato thinks of solution (toupee)

6- Consider: Colleagues laughing at toupee dropping off (Captain Underpants)

7- Potato says no

8- Potato goes to the toupee store to get a toupee

9- Potato goes to work with new head of toupee (show life of its own with oogly eyes with heart)

Show laptop time

10- toupee time with owner (afternoon)

11- toupee time with owner (night)

12- toupee time with owner (morning)

13- potato watching TV

14- TV shows hair cream

15- potato is amazed (bright light at the front)

16- show hair cream beside potato as he does stuff to his bald head

17- next day at work with full head of hair

18- sad and angry toupee at home

19- toupee goes to get super glue and puts it on himself

20- potato goes to work with toupee the next day

21- in bathroom he can’t get it out

22-another attempt to get it out

23- gives up

24- shaves off

25- returns to work with new toupee

26- toupee thumbs up

 

 

Story plan:

 

Storyboard plan (arrangement not confirmed yet)

 

 

PDF FILE:

https://app.box.com/s/zl05lrp6nbhh067kbu7l8p4l6i0dmppd