My team (team 4): Peige (Hengpei) Duan, Danielle Almeida, Kreesha Goinden, and I

*All art is my own unless credited

Planning and Pre-production

We chose the above words because our common interest was a story with action, and we felt that these words resonated with that the most. With these words, my team and I got to brainstorming what overall themes we wanted our story to explore.

The words “self”, “foreshadow” and “disruption” made us think of a time loop, in which the protagonist finds themselves trapped in. Instead of just showing the loops repeating themselves however, we hoped to foreshadow the existence of a loop through the setting and character actions in a single timeline, and wanted the story to end in a failed attempt to escape.

The story we came up with was of two detectives, one undercover as the antagonist. Both were investigating a crime scene in a warehouse after hearing a gunshot. As the protagonist goes ahead to investigate further, they eventually find their own dead body pulled to one side through some blood trails (this then indirectly shows that there is a time loop happening), which prompts the antagonist to reveal their goal of killing the protagonist over and over until the former escapes the loop, as that seems to be the only way to get time to move forward.

Some foreshadowing elements we planned were the blood trails themselves, and the antagonist checking their pocket-watch every now and then as they stood in the background, keeping track of the movement of time.

With the concept of the story outlined, we gave ourselves about 15 minutes to thumbnail our own take on the story individually, so that we could generate more ideas without too many different inputs.

After sharing each other’s ideas we quickly realised that our storylines and all our dialogue would not fit in 20 seconds, so by the end of the day we went away and tried to come up with shorter ways of presenting the story. I was a little stuck on this since the story on its own is already pretty complex, and perhaps 20 seconds wouldn’t be enough for it. So instead I took a few steps back and looked at our foundational idea: the time loop and the protagonist failing.

I attempted to not focus too much on the details at the moment in case my teammates came up with a better version of the previous storyline, but what I had in mind was that the protagonist would develop to become the antagonist after going through multiple time loops of the original antagonist trying to hurt them.

After discussing and pitching the new idea to the group, we decided to build on it since the previous story wasn’t working out for them either. I explained my concept further, and for visual aid I made a very rough board on Storyboard Pro of my idea:

My initial concept

We then went off and developed the board further by doing our own interpretations of it once the concept was understood:

Peige’s boards: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tV5h84aHvfFNewc5Ll29sZhc1araTbHM/view?usp=sharing

Danielle’s boards: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LsDA8EO48ce1oOelCc4abzEQkF8S71eF/view?usp=sharing

Kreesha’s boards: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ccLwyU9VxsT6lMrCA62tnhWqbtvujOCd/view?usp=sharing

Coming together again, I then edited our boards into a singular one, combining what parts of each other’s boards we liked, particularly Danielle’s lighting and setting in a clock tower, Peige’s idea of the using the clockhand as the antagonist’s weapon (and at the same time shows the big clock of the clocktower ticking), and Kreesha’s interpretation of the antagonist who never stops smiling.

Initial pitch:

This was when one of our tutors reviewed what we had so far. Upon watching it with no context, we found that most of the storyline was understood, but the flow of the shots were not consistent enough since the characters kept switching sides (which we reflected was because of how we all boarded our ideas individually with our own takes), and that the idea of repetition wasn’t quite strong enough. The time loop would be better communicated by showing the loop happening about 3 times with the same events before something changes, while what we had was showing the cycles through numbers on the clock, which might be misinterpreted as time moving forward instead.

At this point, we’ve hit a bit of an artblock, since we thought that even if we did show all the cycles of the loop it wouldn’t make for an interesting enough story. After attending the log lines workshop this issue was solidified even more, as we realised that that the concept was too abstract, too convoluted to convey especially within the limited time.

Instead, we looked at the other direction and changed our overall tone from something dark and dramatic to one that’s lighthearted and goofy. This was to turn our attention away from scrutinising details to the point of confusion and to make the storyline simpler, all the while keeping the theme of the self, the connected relationship between the protagonist and antagonist, and foreshadowing. Eventually, a log line for our new story was made:

An old internet rumour about a skirmishing mirror ghost resurfaces on a skeptical Proteus’ (protagonist) internet feed right before his morning routine is rude interrupted by his own reflection.

The concept was originally put forward by Danielle, so she made some quick storyboards to explain it further and for the group to build on.

Danielle’s initial concept

With this as the foundation, I then tried developing it further, trying different acting with the same intent or different angles. One of the comments from the group on the ending was that perhaps the setting shouldn’t change too much to prevent it from seeming rushed and confusing, so I experimented with having the story keep going after the moment the reflection is defeated without any timeskips.

My Initial storyboard (first pass)

Feedback from the group and tutor:

• Cut out the facewashing and turn it into brushing their teeth, or simply just picking up the phone from the sink
• Have the phone be more of a focal point in the first shot
• Leave around 6 seconds for the action scene
• Have the reflection turn around while the protagonist is still in frame, since it was unclear whether the protagonist was the one turning around (causing the reflection to do so too) or if the reflection moved on their own

My Second Storyboard (second pass, greenlit)

I also wanted the action in the fight sequence to be “symmetrical” or a “reflection”, calling back to the theme of fighting your reflection.

Character and Background Design

Next was character and background design. We first focused on character design and outlined a few key points about the characters themselves:

• Focus on simplicity and making them shaped
  • This is both for the cartoonish look and to help with keeping the style consistent
• Silly, active personality, keep it comedic
• Martial-arts background, likes self-care

Then brainstormed some of our ideas in the form of sketches:

Group feedback:

• More focus on shapes, explore a variety of combinations
• Experiment with colours and contrasting the protagonist and antagonist

In the second round of experiments we discussed the possible colour combinations. We tested inverting them, using complementary colours, desaturation and oversaturation, black and white etc. We also determined the overall shapes we would implement into the character to be on the sharper side like triangles and rectangles to suit their liveliness.

However, instead of an artblock this time we hit an issue of too many ideas at once, so from here we split into two teams, one focusing on character design and one for backgrounds.

This is to not only narrow down our designs but also to get started on backgrounds to save time. It was also a good idea for each of us to be able to focus on refining one aspect instead of having both characters and backgrounds to worry about. We would still give feedback for each other as well, except this time we had fresh sets of eyes on whatever each team does.

Teams:

• Character: Peige, Kreesha
• Backgrounds: Me, Danielle

Background Design

Danielle and I wanted to theme our bathrooms around anything martial arts, so we looked at boxing rings, bandaids, and colour palettes like red-blue-white or gold-red.

Out of the first few concept artworks Danielle gave, I was particularly drawn to the POW curtain because it reminded me of the sound effects that would appear in action comics.

Because of that, we went on board with steering the overall tone and feel of the setting to be like something out of an action comic, and I began to put together a moodboard for an action-comic-esque colour palette.

I also researched for inspiration on the bathroom assets, and thought about what would someone who is athletic put and style their bathroom. I looked at gym bathrooms, locker rooms, and was heavily inspired by the Scavolini gym space, which is designed to combine everyday furnishings with equipment for well-being including gym equipment, so both personal care and fitness can be focused on at the same time.

Character Design

Most decisions here were made by my other teammates, but Danielle and I provided feedback on emphasising square and triangle shapes on the face and the bathrobe respectively. For the colours of the reflection, we went with a blue hue over the protagonist’s design to make the transformation between the two smoother.

Below are some of the exploration sketches from them:

Final Decisions

Character design

Background Design

Animation

This part was mostly straightforward. We split up the storyboard into four scenes and assigned one to one person. To keep the team on the same page, I made a workflow chart that everyone could agree on.

Some discussion points during work distribution:

• Kreesha wasn’t confident she could replicate the artstyle of the characters very closely but was willing to help others with backgrounds and drafts, so we agreed to assign a shorter scene for her to animate while helping Peige and I with the other areas respectively.
• Since Danielle was using Procreate for animation, she could not implement camera movement. I volunteered to edit the camera for her in After Effects in the post-production phase.
• Danielle volunteered to handle all sound effects/music as she has had experience doing them before.

To keep the production on track during winter break, we set some deadlines for ourselves (and also messaged each other on Discord if any questions or issues arose).

My animation process (Adobe animate)

Editing (After Effects)

I was tasked with editing all the animations together, rendering and adding text when needed. For Danielle’s camera movement, we talked beforehand and she had done her scene on a longer canvas, which I then parented to the camera (null object) and moved as needed.

During this, some clips weren’t timed exactly to the storyboard which led to the animation going slightly over the time restriction, so I learned how to use the time remapping function to solve the issue. It was also helpful that I experimented with camera movements in the Motion Graphics rotation as well since it made editing this project go a lot smoother.

Sound Effects

Once finished, the video was sent to Danielle for sound effects. Peige also chipped in later to help with a part of the music.

Final Outcome

Extra Scrapped Concepts