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Presentation - Week 10

One of the main themes I took away from reading Metamorphosis was that communication was what ties everyone together and what makes someone feel human. The main character of Metamorphosis really begins to doubt his humanity after his family start removing his human objects out of his room, and arguably severing his ties to people socially, as it would leave him all alone in an empty room without any hope of communicating with anyone no matter how hard he tried.

 I wanted to create a story with a sense of magical realism, because I find it an interesting to think about how the fantastical could, in theory, not be as far away as we think. The two parts of the genre also contradict, so I wanted to show that visually, so I had the idea that the aspects more grounded in realism would have a more muted or dark colour palettes - for example, living people would be in more pastel colours, whereas the main character’s ghost would be in brighter, ethereal lighting to make him stand out. There’s also a demon in the story, and I envisioned it to have a silent but intimidating presence, so everything in its’ immediate area would be in grainy sepia tones, almost to show that it sucks the colour and life out of its’ surroundings. 

Something I’d love to incorporate into the animation is interesting and inventive transitions, where things merge into one another in an almost seamless way. I think it would work really well with the almost dream like state of between life and death the main character finds himself in.

Because my narrative is more on the heavy side, I want to stay away from a style that is too soft or something for children. I was thinking that I should continue the theme of blending realism and magic, so the style would blend realistic and stylistic choices together, but the more removed from reality it is, the more abstract the style becomes. 

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Treatment

BASE STORY

Metamorphosis

LOGLINE

After his untimely demise, a ghost is put into a time loop until he finds reconciliation with his brother.

CHARACTERS

C - A young man who, after an accident,  awakes to find that he has been killed, and is able to see and hear the living world, but is unable to communicate with it. He is stuck in the loop of the day he was killed, until he can find resolve the conflict he had with his brother

C’s Brother - C’s younger sibling, who keeps receiving phone calls from his late brother, but refuses to believe that C is who he says he is, so unknowingly keeps him in purgatory.

Shadow Figure - An entity who appears to be haunting the road C was driving down, and is the one keeping him in purgatory.

Synopsis

ACT 1

Late at night, C is driving alone down an empty road in the rain. A dark, inhuman figure keep appearing at the side of the road in the trees, but C fails to notice. C starts having a nosebleed (courtesy of the figure), and in his bewilderment fails to notice the figure has now appeared in the middle of the road. C looks shocked and tries to swerve - the screen cuts to black.

ACT 2

In the dawn, shows C’s body in the road surrounded by police tape, and authorities and a crowd are all buzzing about the area. C’s brother runs over, shocked. After getting overwhelmed, C’s brother runs away from the scene and has a breakdown by the nearby river. C longs for nothing more than to make peace with his brother and to let him know he truly loves him. This starts the loop of him constantly redoing the phone call on the road to varying degrees of success, but he never manages to resolve his relationship before the crash.

ACT 3

C has had enough of being in the loop of constantly dying over and over and not making up with his brother, so vows to end it on this day. After a rough start, C manages to get all the information and his feelings across to his brother, saying that he doesn’t have much time as he knows he’s going to die, and they both accept that after this phone call C will be gone forever. They say their emotional goodbyes before the crash happens again. It ends on C’s ghost crossing over and the figure dissipating from the side of the road next to the ruins of the car.

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Various other objects worked on in 3D, with some simple textures laid on a few.

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Various stages of the 3D room work, from base model to rendering both in Maya’s own engine and Arnold.

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My first ever work in 3D, a strange looking (but loveable) penguin.

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A more exaggerated and experimental walk cycle

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Evolution of a basic walk cycle

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A perspective focused activity, trying to show the box jump over something, all whilst incorporating squash and stretch as well

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Looking at bouncing, weighted and unweighted drop

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First animation (hurray!)

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Experiments with the shape and proportion of the body and silhouettes of potential poses, along with a more detailed drawing over the top of one of them.

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I chose  Lee Sang-hyeok, better known as his alias Faker for the project that involves turning a celebrity/well known personality into a stylised character. The main characteristics I wanted to capture was his extreme confidence and kingly attitude, but also perhaps a little touch of his more casual,  personality traits he retains outside of big competitions.

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Digital painting of a sphere and experiments on how to paint a character

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Class exercises on stylisation and exaggeration of character proportions and the importance of weight of line

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Kubo and the Two Strings: Plot Analysis

Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American 3D stop-motion action fantasy film directed and produced by Travis Knight (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubo_and_the_Two_Strings)

The plot revolves around Kubo, a young boy with magic who’s eye was taken by is grandfather, the Moon King, and his efforts to find out the mystery of the events causing this. He also sets out to find the magical armour that will help him fight his grandfather.

Act 1: Beginning and Setup

We are introduced to Kubo and his mother, who crash onto the shore from their boat, where the viewer is shown that baby Kubo is missing an eye.

It cuts to the future showing Kubo’s daily life, which involves caring for his mother, who appears to be unresponsive most of the time. 

He then goes out to the village proper to earn money by telling his famous stories about his father Hanzo, a famous samurai. He uses his magic to play music and manipulate paper into grand shows for the people there.

Here we learn about the three pieces of magic armour: the Sword Unbreakable, Breastplate Unpenetrable and Helmet Invulnerable. However he never finishes the stories, because he himself does not know how his father’s story ends, and even his own mother cannot tell him because of her patchy memory and unresponsiveness, and he always leaves the village just before the sun sets.

Kubo returns to his mother and we learn that he has three rules he must obey: he must keep the wooden monkey charm he owns on him at all times, must wear his father’s robes at all times, and must never be outside after dark.

The next day is a festival where the village people talk to their dead ancestors and Kubo tries to contact his father, but to no avail. In his frustration he fails to notice that he has stayed outside past sundown. 

His evil aunts are now able to find him, and claim they are going to take his other eye by order of his grandfather.

This is the onscreen turning point, because now that his aunts have been able to see him, he cannot go back to his normal life as he knew it.  

Kubo’s mother rushes to his location and having figured out what has happened, tells Kubo he must find the magical armour to protect himeself, and uses the last of her magic to give him wings so he can fly away. As the wings take him away, Kubo pulls a strand of his mother’s hair out and is whisked far from his aunts.

This signals the end of the first act, where he begins his quest to find the armour.

Act 2: Middle and Confrontation

Kubo awakes in a blizzard, only to find his monkey charm has transformed into an actual monkey who says it is her job to protect him on his mother’s request. After asking questions to get his bearings, Kubo goes to sleep.

Monkey wakes him up to inform him that whilst asleep his magic has created a little paper man.

This paper man (who they end up calling Hanzo, like Kubo’s father) points them in a direction, and having no other ideas, they follow his lead.

Kubo is then taken by a mysterious figure, who turns out just wanted to look at the paper man. The mysterious figure is shown to be a beetle warrior who claims that Kubo’s father Hanzo was his master, and he joins them on their quest.

They find the Sword Unbreakable first after a fight with a giant skeleton.

They then have to cross the Long Lake to find the Breastplate Unpenetrable, where it is submerged. Kubo dives in and retrieves it, but is entranced by the Garden of Eyes, who tell secrets to keep people down under the water, and he is shown that Monkey is in fact his mother’s spirit in a different body. Above the water, Monkey is currently fighting one of Kubo’s aunts who has come to stop them - she wins, but is injured in the process.

They decide to rest and Kubo has a dream where a mysterious man tells Kubo that the remaining piece of the armour is in his father’s fortress.

They head over to the fortress but it turns out to be a trap, and Kubo’s remaining aunt is lying in wait for them. 

Kubo’s aunt reveals that as punishment for taking her sister, Kubo’s mother away from them, the family cursed Hanzo by taking away all his memories and giving him a different body - Beetle has been Hanzo, Kubo’s father, all this time.

Kubo’s aunt manages to kill both Beetle and Monkey.

The death of Kubo’s parents signifies the second major plot point conflict, as he now has the conviction and drive to face his grandfather to avenge their deaths.

Kubo manages to kill his aunt, but breaks two of the strings on his shamisen in doing so. He finds out that the actual location of the helmet is in his hometown, and he uses his magic to fly himself over there, but not before taking his father’s bowstring as a memento. 

After picking up the helmet, Kubo challenges his grandfather to come face him, and here starts the resolution of the plot.

Act 3: End and Resolution

Kubo’s grandfather, the Moon King, is revealed to be the mysterious man from his dream.

He tells Kubo the reasons for his actions (for Kubo to become immortal and take his place in heaven he must become blind towards humanity), but Kubo does not want to hear it, so his grandfather transforms into a monster and they proceed to battle.

After fighting a while, the subplot of Kubo collecting mementos from his parents comes into play as he uses his mother’s hair, his father’s bowstring and his own hair to restring his shamisen and uses magic to call upon the memories of the townspeople and unleashes a devastating attack on his grandfather.

After the commotion clears, Kubo’s grandfather appears as a mortal, and when before he was blind, he now has one functioning eye, symbolising he is no longer the cold and evil man he once was. He has no memories at all, and the townspeople decide that they will tell him the stories he has forgotten, and therefore make him a kind man.

Now that Kubo has saved not only himself but also his grandfather, Kubo has resolved his conflicts and goes to talk and make peace with the spirits of his parents, and the film ends happily.