Course: Concept Development II
The final project of the semester—storyboard/animatic assignment creating a 1 minute limit story idea incorporating any of the editing techniques we learned. No more than two characters and one environment due to the importance of treating this like a possible senior thesis.
The setting is a classy European antique store. A porcelain shepherd boy figurine chases after his smallest sheep that decided to play around the store while the owner is away. If the time limit was longer, I would have kept more of the much needed emotional beats. It would have been nice to make this a cultural love story instead with a European and Chinese figurine falling for each other, but that restricts the animation. Trust me when I say that I too don’t like the ending; the real ending would be he returns the sheep back to their pedestal and all is well, but alas, that is predictable—if the time limit were longer, I could come up with something else, so this was the shortest possible ending.
Wanted to try a silent film, which means action, sound, and music must drive the story.
Dialogue is my voice (the owner is supposed to be male), sound effects from freesound and YouTube. Used three music pieces—“Merry Moment” from the soundtrack of the anime Trinity Blood, “Polka Capriccioso for chamber orchestra” from the soundtrack of the anime Ouran High School Host Club, and “The Plot Thickens” by Donn Wilkerson from Killer Tracks, all of which I sliced apart and spliced back together into the mutant Frankenstein music you hear in the video. XD I’m amazed at how well the music I did find turned out and how seamless the beat is. I thoroughly enjoy sound design even though it wouldn’t be final in the senior thesis anyway. XD
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Done in Photoshop, Adobe Soundbooth, composited in Adobe Premiere.
Completed in 2014 April 30.
