Storyboard 3: Hidden

Merrin's magic keeps her safe on the dangerous roads between cities, but her fierce facade is even more effective. She almost never lowers her hood in these dark lands any more, this must be a special occasion.

Hidden could easily be called Reveal, because it is all about the reveal. Building a bit of tension with an image of a sinister figure, the audience will assume certain things about the figure, for instance that they are likely to be male. When the glowing 'eyes' are revealed to be shapes below the eyes, and the face itself is not monstrous but in fact disarmingly beautiful, the trick is complete. I enjoyed creating a story behind who she is and why she does this.

Storyboard 2: Countdown

It's 2043. Manny Calavera has 64 days to live. If he completes the instructions given to him by those who implanted the SmartVirus, he could live a lot longer. But it's not easy to kill a man.

Originally, Countdown was nowhere near this dark. It was about a future where medical data about one's body could be brought up in animated tattoo form, so people could assess their health in the bathroom mirror each morning. When trying to expand this into an interesting character and situation, I hit on the idea of reversing it. What if it told you how many days you had left to live? What if it was a sinister presence in your system, used to control you?

Storyboard 1: Speed Trigger

Speed Trigger is inspired a bit by Back to the Future (what happens at 88mph?) and also reminds me of a cartoon short I saw once years ago on Liquid Television about a crazy futuristic racer. It is about speed as a drug, and how this man can't help but seek his limit (of 300kph) even knowing that surpassing it will destabilise his body and obliterate him. This relationship between a person and a dangerous yet addictive thing is interesting to explore.

Some face transformation studies relating to this:

Context and Story

Elle had a chat to us about what she would like to see in the assignment, and gave us a different perspective on it.

Being called Fate means that this video we produce, although short, will be most effective if it hints at many more things that did happen and will happen. With this in mind, I have decided to reimagine my concepts with a bigger picture in mind, as though this shot is just one sliver of a whole film. I love creating interesting characters and a world and situation for them to inhabit, so I'm excited to see what can come out of this approach.

First Sketches

How to approach a very film-centric assignment, with almost entirely film-based inspiration and examples, without the outcome being just another boring-but-at-least-well-executed slice of video?

I thought of doing something more abstract, just trying to create a scene in which a strange being is just, well, being. The image I had in my head of this glowy-faced, billowy-haired thing ended up being very similar to the 'jacked-in' segments of an animation short called Matriculated, which is part of the excellent Animatrix anthology.

I also had a stab at the tattoo option, which seemed obvious but rife with possibility still. Emotionally responsive tattoos seem interesting, but perhaps a little too obvious. My second idea in this vein was to move away from the face slightly and present a vision of the future in which people had adaptive tattoos capable of displaying information about the body. This health readout would be commonly on the neck, and the user could call it up and manipulate it using touch or even thought. It would be linked to a vast network of nanobots keeping tabs on and even aiding the body. This has a sort of DLF feel to it, suggesting a wider setting and idea through its short timeframe and seems to have more worth than my other ideas.

I'll work on variations of this for the storyboards and see where it takes me, perhaps find some sci-fi to draw from.