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Animatic

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Song and Audio

So I found this royalty free song which I thought was really nice and worked for a kinda party scene vibe that I wanted to get across in the house. 

I trimmed the song to 2 minutes. 

I edited it to get the drowned out, bouncing off soft furnishings through a whole house sound rather easily by putting it through a low filter pass (using an equalizer can give you a similar effect). I did this in audacity. I then repeated this process but near the end of the 2 minutes since that takes place upstairs so the msuci would be even more drowned out. I then faded out the audio in the last couple of seconds and then continued to fiddle around with the low filter pass until I was happy with how it was sounding.

(ignore the video in the bottom corner, I was playing youtube videos as I was editing, I don’t like silence lol)

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Storyboard

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The Story Recap

The girl is a shapeshifter who uses her powers as crutch to literally masks who she is using animal masks, she presents different personalities to suit her environment at the cost of losing her understanding of who she is. She is searching through the house to find her closest friend, her solace, her haven, and upon finding them her masks falls off with them seeing through it as their power is to nullify other's powers. She crumbles into their arms, tears falling down her face as she is final safe and accepted. It's a representation of masking to the point of losing who you are and finding someone who accepts who you are without that mask, who accepts you completely, ugly parts and all. It is pretty much a love letter to myself in slowly learning not to mask and to not only accept myself to be myself but to actually go through the process of actually learning who I am, who I was before I began masking so that I can then finally accept who I am. It's probably why this scene in Fruits Basket has always had a deep impact on me (apologise for the poor video quality, it’s the only clip I could find of the scene): 

It is from Season 1 Episode 24

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WORK IN PROGRESS 2

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Colour Test

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Techniques

So with the 3D model I went through and took screenshots of the shots I wanted so I could draw over them. I'm going to use royalty free party music but I'm going to customize it a little by commissioning someone to adjust the music to be a very pulled back light motif for the emotional moment in the end of her mask coming off revealing her true self because I don't want the change between the shift in music to be too jarring. Failing that however I do like the idea of editing the music to sound drowned out like this:

I considered having a 3D environment and animating the character moving through that however aesthetically I much prefer the look of the 2D frame by frame animation even though it will be more time consuming, I feel it will be worth it in the end. I really am excited to show her shifting personality through how she moves in each space as well as with the change in physical appearance to show how each mask is to let her deal with different groups.

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Turnaround

Turnaround of the characters true form. I really wanted to keep the twin braids of the last sketch I did however in making the turnaround, I felt that the braids didn’t read as clearly as I wanted and would be an extra difficulty for me to deal with in keeping them looking consistent in different perspectives so I opted to chop them. I wanted her to be rather plain and comfy so I gave her a huge oversized sweater, similar to the large comfy killstar sweaters I’ve seen but without the stripes which I instead opted to having on her socks. I wanted her to be a bit more plain in styling than her mask versions to contrast their styling and to make her feel more like an unexplored blank slate to create the narrative that she hasn’t been able to build on her own personal identity.

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WORK IN PROGRESS 1

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Designs

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Colour Schemes

I want the colour scheme to be very cosy so these are some colour pallettes I’ve looked at. The top 2 images are closest to the vibe I wanted to create with the colour scheme, they are warm, cosy and elegant which goes very well with the midcentury style I’m going for with the home.

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Fashion

I have a big interest in fashion so I have had a lot of fun thinking about the styles of each of the masks personalities, taking particularly a lot of inspiration from Japanese street styles, like the asymetrical androgynous style of mode, the sweet and delicate, gentleness of the more classic lolita, Techwear, Minimalism, White on White, I also loved the styles with the mink coat on this website https://www.hauteacorn.com/20-killing-ways-to-style-your-mink-coat/ the coat in many of these styles reads as quite bold, strong and slightly masculine with the clothes underneath having the potential to create a femine balance to the outfit. But oh my do I love the power that comes from a fur coat, I wanted one of the characters to have that strong, loud, personality.

These videos were also a good source of inspiration along with watching a lot of lookbook videos people have made all over the world.

(I watched an ungodly amount of HauteLeMode’s analysis of different runway collections)

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Moodboards

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Research on masking

I really like that she also decided to represent masking in a very literal way using masks in her art instalition. It was very interesting watching this news segment and hearing from other women with their experiences masking and the misconception that because autism looks different for girls that “only boys have autism” which is a hilarious notion.

Singer SIA made a film about autism in collaboration with Autism Speaks, an organisation that actually spreads misinformation about autism, are anti stimming, eugenists and only gives 4% of their budget to ‘help’ autistic individuals, the film was a really disgusting offensive potrayal of autism. The autistic girl is not played by an autistic person, the potrayal of meltdowns and stimming was abhorrent and also it promotes an incredibly dangerous way of restraining an autistic person having a self harmful meltdown. SIA has chosen to die on the hill of defending this film which as the online proverb goes, “pop off queen, weird hill to die on but at least you’re dead”. This link is an autistic woman who is also the parent of 6 neurodivergent kids explaining why she does not support Autism Speaks https://autisticmama.com/do-not-support-autism-speaks/

Here is also a video explaining the issues indepth about SIA’s movie:

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Research

This TED Talk made me cry, I was so overcome with the feeling of being understood, having everything I feel, the things I have masked, how these things feel and the exhaustion it causes, it was beautiful hearing it explained so much better than I could ever describe.

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Set Styling Research

For my new project I have made a complete house layout in Blender. I took a floor plan I liked after browsing a few in a real estate website featuring luxury homes because conceptually considering the original story of multiple heros living together there would need to be ample living space for a lot of people. I made some alterations in order to use the space the way I felt would be the best  for the characters. They are rather jouvenile heros they all have their own interests and I imagined that the house owner and teacher of the heros would likely host parties with high up politicians to raise funds to maintain their secrecy. I watched a LOT of interior design and architectural shows and videos on youtube and really put my head into being a bit like a tv/movie designer whilst still considering functionality of what these characters need from a home.

I watched Grand Designs, Your Home Made Perfect, Interior Design Masters and Dream Homes on Netflix.

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 I also watched videos on youtube from The Sorry Girls, Tina Le, DIY Danie, xo macenna, LoneFox, and Alexandra Gater, as they have great ideas on style, on storage solution, on good room configuration (particularly Alexandra Gater as her clients tend to live in tiny cramped studio apartments and she makes those spaces feel much larger.) I also watched a lot of Architectural Digest in their series of designers creating furniture, designing spaces and their Open Door series, from that I took inspiration from the book shelf created by designer Leonard Bessemer in this video:

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Troye Sivan, Bretman Rock and Kylie Jenner's homes in the Open Door series specifically the plants from Bretman Rock, the overal cosy, classy eclictic vibe of Troye Sivan's and I fell in love with the living room and light fixtures in Kylie Jenner's home.

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I found I particularly gravitated towards midcentury and dark and moody, maximalist styles, they feel cosy, classic, a bit older and especially in terms of midcentury, timeless.

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Making all the house in blender really helps keep things to scale when drawing and makes it a lot easier for me to see the character moving through the space for when I'm animating her, keeping everything to scale as the perspective changes.

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Movement

Inspiration of characters moving through a space came from AD's Open Door, Princess and the Cobbler, Vogue's 73 Questions, Tick Tick Boom, 1917, Cloverfield, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, ELF, The Dennis the Menace movie, Devil Wears Prada, Children of Men, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, Paddington, Victoria and The Umbrella Academy.