"All is One, One is All"
The Universe is created by the small Beings that inhabit in it. In return, every Beings couldn't exist without the shelter of the Universe.
The Universe is created by the small Beings that inhabit in it. In return, every Beings couldn't exist without the shelter of the Universe.
This animation was produced using the traditional hand-drawn 2D technique, with a full musical score and sound exclusive design for it.
This was a collaboration project between students from Bachelor (Hons) Animation Art, Puttnam School of Film and Animation and student from Bachelor (Hons) Music, LASALLE College of the Arts.
Inspiration
"I am called by many names.
I am the world,
I am the universe,
I am God,
I am truth,
I am all,
I am one,
And I am you."
Our animation was heavily inspired by this quote from the manga Full Metal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa.
Early Concept
It all started with these early sketches by Miyako, "The world constructed by "organic" mechanics and gears", she explained to us. Then she proceeded with a gorgeous sketch of a girl lifting her shirt up, revealing the inside built like a clockwork, and there's this tiny version of the same girl peeking out from that roomful of gears.
"That's a very intriguing concept, but it still missing something", we thought.
Miyako's sketches were beautiful, but it lacked some "punches" in it. Why was the main character a human girl? Her "flesh human skin" stood out a bit too much within a mechanical world. In these sketches she looks like a lost girl who was wandering aimlessly in this world, not really a part of it. We're looking for something that breath more harmony. The character should be a part of the world, and vice versa.
After many cups of coffee and close to a caffeine overdose, Geraldine came up with a brilliant idea. How about we have the character a half-mechanic half-human, and the gears "breath" and move like organic beings?
Great, but how were we going to visualize it out? What was the most simple mechanical object with a strong visual appearance? Which one could suggest a sense of life in it without being over-complicated?
"A light bulb of course"
We finally settled with a simple design for our main character. She should look like a blank sheet of paper, who mindlessly follow the system before her adventure. Albeit her blank appearance, she should subtly show her own personality through her acting. A curious and brave little light bulb when circumstance call.
World Building (Environment)
The world building proved to be the most tricky part of this project. Every parts of this world needed to function like a clockwork, while breathing like an organic system.
We dug inspiration from the deep sea, where organic sea creatures form colonies with remnant of sunken ships and old civilization. Also many hours watching classic animation, books and games with similar concept, such as Laputa Castle in the sky (Hayao Miyazaki), Iblard Jikan (Naohisa Inoue), The Brambly Hedge series (Jill Barklem), work by Ian Miller, Adolf Lachman, etc.
We couldn't agreed on the look of the background, so we quickly assembled some rough concept to grab the overall mood.
The concept had a whimsical feeling in it, which would compliment well with the faint light from the bulb girl. However, this concept was bordering on a nightmarish kind of dream. We're seeking for a more poetic feel, something more welcoming.
Since we're going for a deep sea theme, how about making some watercolor texture to the world?
Also, we wanted to add some mystery, dark corner in this world, as dreams were often blurry and lack of shape.
World Building (Creatures)
This was the most exciting part of the project. We would like a deep sea environment, therefore a deep sea / outer space gravity is where we go for. We thought of using wind, as a metaphor for air, to bring life to the creatures in this world. Without the wind, everything would be lifeless and stop functioning.
Storyboard
It's very tricky to tell the idea of "world within world". We kept changing the idea, each of us did several versions of the storyboard. Nothing really worked at the time. They were either too complicated that they lost the overall tone, or too weak to tell the idea. We kept working on the ending until we were halfway through production.
Miyako finally came up with the ending. "We have to show an epic zoom out scene. The entire world must wake up, come to life, then we keep zooming out through the universe and everything has to come together to form into the light that wakes the light bulb girl." There's really no other way around it, it's the right ending , but could we pull it off? The technical aspect of it worried us to the core. But we have to push for it, because there's no other way around to tell the story.
Color Script
Planning the color was a very straight forward process.
We started with a deep marine blue, dream like palette in the introduction of Act 1.When the girl accidentally activate the gears system in Act 2, a sudden purge of magenta, thunderous feeling. A dull, bleak, almost death like feeling as the gears system dies out in between Act 2 and 3. Then finish with a burst of colors and light by the end of Act 3.
Animation
We created our own customize brushes to get the watercolor texture on this project.
The line work had a pencil / charcoal texture in it. We color fill the base color, then we hand-drawn the shadow and light using another watercolor texture brush.
There were a lot of big scenes with an assembly of elements such as background animation, pack of characters, fx, etc. The scale of the canvas most often went overboard with the render capacity of our laptop and school computer. We solved this problem by doing the camera work on one big background. Then divided the scene into 2 different shots, then combine them together in the post production.
Sound Design
The keyword for the sound design in this film is "Organic". All the gears in this world should have their own unique voice. After the world came back alive, all the sounds should sync together to form a symphony.
We look into the unique, ambient soundtrack of Samorost 3 (Amanita Design), the vocal from The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki), the singing voice of whales and dolphins for reference.
Our music composer Jingyao Wang used a Chinese hammer dulcimer - the yangqin, with sound mixing by Miyako, to create the unique sounds of the gears.
