Advanced Animation (Storytelling)

Date : September/1/2023

Name : Mabuchi Arata

Lecture : Advanced Animation

Lecture's Name + Martin Chong Yuh Lin

ID : 03515789

1, Introduction

In this module, we've learnt about the technique of storytelling to connect it to the level of emotional level in audience to emphasize your work much better. To conclude the ideas for it first, you must include personal experience into your story and retelling your story with ideas of "What If...?"

2, storytelling techniques

First of all, the story itself doesn't come up only from concept ideas, the story is required to be made with emotional line so audience can feel same sensations the character, so the story itself will become much more interesting to see. The good example of revealing personal expression of life in story is "Monsters. Inc", in this movie, two movie's protagonists, one eyed small green monster "Mike Wazowski" and Big friendly blue monster "James P. Sullivan" has met one young female child called "Boo" who has entered to the Monster world, where professional monsters who are good at scare kids to get energy used for Normal Life. At first time, they both scared at Boo and even terrified her, but through they tried to return Boo to her bedroom, they befriend her. This story was inspired from experience of thif film Director, Pete Doctor, at the creation of this story, he become a father, this experience strongly inspire him to create this great story. This example clearly explains us that personal experience inspire story a lot.

To conclude about the lesson so far, personal experienced that made you to feel strong feeling can create strong emotion. When you try to create your own story, make sure to synchronize story with your own emotional personal experience which you feel strong emotion not bigger than others.

3, What if...?

"What if...?" statements create the whole new world settlement that can make unique settings for new moves, this what if statement can be physical thing such as Toy story which sets what if statement as "What if toys are talking normally when kids are not playing?" or abstract thing such as Inside out which sets what if as "what if there are 5 different characters inside our brain who organize different feeling such as Joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust", these thinking about what if statement can create characters and world for animations and both factor can be metaphor for deep theme.

4, Story Ideas #1

Once after finishing about explaining what I've learnt, here is my turn to create my own story for upcoming project. In the module project said that Choose any Pixar short for inspiration and analyze how this story become a great story from emotional connection and personal experiences. Make your own version, then create your “What If” statement to spark you ideas and finally Think of the main characters and world that can inspire your story. In this portfolio, I'd like to separate the progress into half and I am going to do until analyzing my favored Pixar short to crate my own version.

My chosen movie is "Day and Night" (2010), The story itself is all about the two characters "Day" and "Night", who are the characters who events happens within inside of their own body, every daily events happen inside of "Day" and every Nights events happen inside of "Night". The story starts when they both meet each other at first time, they disliked and fight each other because of being different, however, they realize both time Day and Night have interesting events and they are understanding to befriend each others, in the end of film, the Sun descends in Day and Sun rise up in Night and the Day becomes Night and Night becomes Day.

This story can be a metaphor of accepting different in our social life, in our social life people can be totally different each other, gender, height, nationality, ability, disability and so on. These kind of things can be sometimes cause of conflict and fighting each other, but accepting differences can be great opportunity to know something new and interesting. I feel similar emotional impact story this storyline, because I have spend longer than 9 years in Malaysia and since 2015, I was dived into totally different learning(educational) system, at the first time I sometimes upset and cause trouble, but then I started to immerse in the environment and people from different countries. Accepting differences might be hard, but accepting them can be a chance to know totally new impressions.

5, Story Ideas #2

To move to the next step and final process of this animation project, we have to think about "what if...?" statement. This is the process that we get over the logical thinking and open the gate of imagination to come up the great ideas as much as possible. In Pixar studio, designer, director, storywriter and all other staffs are planning the great ideas about "what if...?" statement to produce great movies for us, such as "what if toys are living their own life in out of kid's vision?"(Toy story), "What if cleaning robot met futuristic robot from outer space in the Earth with full of garbage" or "what if superhero had a family and tries to spend their normal life?"(The Incredibles). In this time, any ideas are acceptable and I have to think many ideas as much as possible.

After several time to spend "What if" statement for my project, I've got several ideas as shown below.

I decided to choose "Ingredients in curry rise can speak?" as my What if statement for my project, this is because I am going to use "acceptance of difference each other" as theme of my animation, the differences things can be something that is easily to notice, therefore my mind naturally sift into the cooking idea because secret ingredients Japanese put in the curry can be various things. (Japanese curry is totally different things to Southeast or India curry, but it is different things to talk here so I will explain in another time.) 

After stating what if situation, I have to go to the next step which is about designing world and character, but this is going to be my next e-portfolio.