statement of intent post 3

Narrative

Working Title

A Drop in the Pond

Character

A raindrop.  Water is generally symbolic of life, which we will take advantage of.  However, water can also change—shape, solidity, opacity—and that level of physical change can aesthetically represent a change in mood or mindset.  In this way, our raindrop can feel relatable to a human, despite not having traditional human features, such as facial expressions.

Top Row: Varying potential textures for Raindrop (matte, ice, water).

Lower Right: Sad Raindrop, as shown by the slumped shaped and dimmed colour, playing up Raindrop’s ability to morph.

Lower Left: Raindrop upon colliding with another object.  Again, morphing allows him to splash for dramatic effect.  The lighter colour, especially around the normally-darker outline, indicates alarm.

Outline

Character	Raindrop (Begins as smaller particles and coalesces into a full-sized droplet.)
Story-world	1.     Raincloud (Begins as a light grey, then slowly becomes darker, until Raindrop falls off of it) 2.     The ground (Post-fall; includes an umbrella and a puddle)
Problem	Raindrop wants to stay on his cloud, and to avoid the ground, but he engages in an altercation with another raindrop, forcing him off.
Metaphors	1.     Raindrop’s ability to morph exemplifies how we change as we age. 2.     As Raindrop falls, he realises the size of the world and that he is very small.  Raindrop eventually falls into a puddle, creating little more than a ripple, re-establishing that feeling. 3.     More raindrops fall, and the puddle grows, showing what combined effort can do.  The camera lowers into the pond to see a fish swimming— it can only live there because the raindrops have created its home.  At the edge of the new pond, a plant grows.  A tidal wave (that looks like Raindrop) destroys a city.  People in numbers can be good or bad. 4.     In the end of the film, after everything settles down, small particles rise up from the puddle and begin to form a new raindrop, symbolic of rebirth and resilience.

This is a sample scene (however, the umbrella is a borrowed image, and the scenery will be enhanced with other images/textures during the final project).  Raindrop is colliding with an umbrella.  He is lightly-coloured to convey alarm.

Sound

Primary a foley-based soundtrack.

Inspirations

Flowerpots by Rafael Sommerhalder

The film is neatly hand-drawn—or designed to look hand-drawn—and is soothingly simplistic in its feel.  Its sound is limited to foley, which works well because it does emphasise that simplicity.  In our film, we would like to use a similar sound-technique, so that each action is exaggerated.

The Hedgehog in the Fog by Yuriy Norshteyn

            The Hedgehog in the Fog truly exhibits the importance of texture in cut-out animation, as each feature is a different texture, and thus each feature feels as though it is its own entity.  The hedgehog and the owl, for example, are made of two different materials, rather than both being drawn coloured-pencil style.  Though these two characters look different on a structural level, it suggests that using unique textures could be a way to differentiate characters whom would otherwise look very similar.  In our plan for A Drop in the Pond, we mention two raindrops battling atop a cloud, and they could be composed of different materials or fills (one gradient, one shimmery) to distinguish them.

Rabbit by Run Wrake

            From this film, we would like to learn from the cut-out style used, as we also plan to use chiefly After Effects to compose our scenes.  Here, the emphasis would be on the incorporation of background, as the backgrounds are very detailed, yet do not draw too much attention to themselves so as to take away from the main characters.

Angry Man by Anita Killi

            This is a cut-out style animation that takes advantage of both available textures and hand-drawn aspects.  The background pieces feel like found objects, but the movable characters have a coloured-pencil quality to their faces and a construction-paper quality to their clothes.  Such a character designed is reminiscent of childhood art projects, and concerning the film’s story about a young boy and a violent father, makes the message more poignant.  While we have mentioned the importance of texture before, this is another place where it works, and therefore it is another place we can learn from.

Skills Needed

·      Basic drawing

·      Basic Anime Studio Pro (to animate Raindrop)

·      Photography (to gather textures)

·      After Effects (to compile images: characters and background)