S tory Development My first idea about a woman leaving from a chair was that I hoped I could do conflict characters which are the woman and the chair. I started thinking about interesting conflicts and movements between two of them. I set a tidy personality for the woman and childish like personality for the chair. The idea of tidy personality was from my roommate that she is always strict to clean her room. For the story, first version of the story was based on that the woman want to clean the chair, but the chair keep escaping. When I thought about escaping, I wanted to do something interesting like ‘Manipulation’ by Daniel Greaves. I like his work playing with characters and papers. I thought about my chair escaping from the paper and the woman could not find it.
Manipulation, Daniel Greaves
However, the first version of the story was too complicated like the storyboard show here. There are too many plots going on and the story become a bit confusing at the end. At first, I set quite a lot of background stories for the woman. She is a middle age woman who has a successful job but she could not find her true love. That’s why I put a man pulling her hand at the end of the story. Since the story was a bit too long and complicated, I decided to get rid of the chair character and make the storyline clearly. Also, since I removed chair character, I gave up playing between chair character and papers. The new storyline is that some water starts leaking from a broken cling and the woman tries to solve the problems.
Storyboard Sketch
C haracter Design I set my woman character as a Japanese middle age woman who is very tidy and strict to everything. I did quite a lot of researches and tried different types of character design. At first, I wanted my character was very tall and thin. I did some researches of Jean Marie Angles’s work and I really like the exaggerated figures and some distorted portions. The character design of his works are appealing and interesting. From his design, I felt some funny features but still modern at the same time.
Jean Marie Angles
I tried to find my own way to design a middle age skinny woman. I found it difficult at first because normally we will think about a little bit fatty woman when it comes to middle age women. Finally, I tried several times and designed a quite great result for me. I decided to keep the thin figure body but added more wrinkles on her face.
Character Research
Character Research
Clothes Research
Character Research
Character Design Draft
Character Design Draft
Character Research
Character Design
Character Research
Character Research
Character Design Draft
Character Design Final(First Version)
C haracter Design However, when I started doing storyboard I found the height of the woman was a little bit tricky because I could not do camera moving in this short film. That means if I show her whole body, the face will become small and the facial expression will become unclearly in the screen. Thus, I decided to show more facial expressions of my character and start to redesign the character’s figure. Since I really like character modern style, I did some researches of Melinda Beck’s works. I like the way she designed symbolic graphics and unrealistic style. Another artist I have done some researches was Wendy Tilby. I like her style in the film ‘Strings’ in which she painted on the glasses and made the texture looks so unique and fresh.
Melinda Beck
Strings, Wendy Tilby
I combined all the ideas and tried to figure out a new character with my own style. For the final character, I gave her a fit body but rounded face, short hair which make her more like successful woman, and formal dress which emphasise her strict personality to everything. Doing in digital painting I have tried mixing different textures and brushes in Photoshop. I found I liked the effects mixing black and white lines together. For colours, one of my favourite film ‘Amélie’ by Jean-Pierre Jeunet in which the colours have used made the film looks quirky but interesting. This is also what I want to approach in my film. Especially we could see they used a lot of red and green together but put it properly. Then I tried to make my character close to red colour and background close to green colour. Character Research
Character Design Draft
Charcter Design Outline
Texture Testing
Colour Testing
Character Design Final
S cene Design In the beginning, I planed to have blank background because I want to play with papers and characters. Since I changed the story I changed my mind and designed the woman’s room. I searched lots of furnitures that more close to vintage style and warm texture. Also, because I would like to use red and green colours in my scene, I searched some of furnitures are close to these two colours. For my final room design, I put most of green colour in the whole room and some red colour like chair and shelf to make it look interesting. Also, I added some yellow and blue colours which are similar tone as the red and green colours to balance the scene.
Scene Research
AmĂŠlie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
For the perspective of the scene, I chose a very low angle at the beginning to shoot that confused audience sometimes. So I decided to change to a higher angle can show the whole room. This time I chose the angle is more like a surveillance camera. The reason why I always prefer extreme angles is because I found it quite interesting that these kind of angles make the scene distorted and look quirky but appealing for me.
Scene Research
Scene Design Draft
Scene Design Greyscale
Scene Design Colour
Concept Art
P roduction At first, I decided to do 2D frame by frame animation and then I chose to do it in digital after I wrote the story. After trying different softwares, I chose TV paint for this film. This is also my first time to use it but I found it quite handy and not difficult to catch up. For character movements, I did keyframe first for most of the movements, but some of frames I did it straightly like the tornado effects. I wanted to do quick movements when the woman catches leaking water, and then I did some testing about it. I found it if I use tornado effect, the result will look better than I just use human figure and jump to next frame. Besides, I also did some blurry effects when the woman quickly jump to next frame. For sounds, I went to sound studio to record some sounds and I also found some audio tracks from Audiojungle.
For this project, I wanted to challenge myself to use different methods to do animation. Since I only did 3D animation before, this is my first time to do 2D frame by frame animation. I found it interesting and I could get more stylish result. For some effects, It’s easier to build up just drawing. I felt quite free and happy about I don’t need to do lots of simulation like in 3D. Next, I am looking forward to combine 2D stylish drawing and 3D space together in my final film.
Tornado Effect
Blurry Effect
Movements Testing
S toryboard-1
S toryboard-2
S toryboard-3
F inal Film IDEA My plan is to do an animated documentary film which is talking about my grandmother’s memory. She lived in a huge different timing from us. Taiwan used to be a colony of Japan. At the time, lots of Taiwanese children had to learn Japanese at school. During World War II, some foreigners like American came to Taiwan, and they also brought some new fruits like apple to Taiwan. At that time, only rich family could have apple or you had to be sick in a hospital then you may get an apple. Apple was kind of symbol of rich people at that time. I want to bring more local Taiwanese stories to show on screen. For example, the film ‘The Sandwich Man’ by Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou. The story was talking about a father could not find a job but only be a comedian on the street. At the end, his son could not recognise his father without makeup because his father always worked overtime until his son had slept.
The Sandwich Man, Hsiao-Hsien Hou
Another animation film I have used as a reference is ‘Nyosha’ by Liran Kapel and Yael Dekel. The story was talking about a young Jewish girl and based on a true story. The way they recorded their grandmother’s voice to elaborate the story is also the way I want to approach. Also, they used shoes as a symbol as the young girl’s faith which I also want to use some symbol to elaborate different meanings in my film.
Nyosha, Liran Kapel and Yael Dekel
I-HSUAN LEE UCA FARNHAM 2016