LIFE's A GLITCH Willie Russell | Thesis 1 Final Document | Fall 2011 | Jun Sassa
LIFE's A GLITCHWillie Russell | Thesis 1 Final Document | Fall 2011 | Jun Sassa
THESISIntent
The goal of my thesis is to create a dynamic narrative animation that is un-expectantly touching. I want the audience to feel something, while having fun. I have decided to create a one-of-a-kind love story. A schizophrenic story of a worm’s search for love and the confusion that ensues. I also wanted to explore techniques that I have yet to try out. I have been experi-menting with technical ways to glitch my footage to provide the real effect. No plugins or internal effects allowed. I want the glitch to be an integral part of my main character’s schizophrenic personality. The goal of this narrative is to simply create a film that will touch, shock, and surprise its audience all at the same time. I want it to be an animation that uses an odd combination of practices to create a truly unique film.
RESEARCHLife’s a Glitch
glitchNoun/gliCH/
1. A sudden, usually temporary malfunction or irregularity of equipment: “a computer glitch.” 2. An unexpected setback in a plan; a hitch, a snag
I needed to research both how to technically glitch my animation, and how to tell a solid narrative. So I have researched both computer programs and the art of telling a story.
RESEARCHcontinued
This image is the first glitch I created by simply compressing an image over and over again in strange file formats.
RESEARCHcontinued
I learned how to glitch my footage using FFmpegX and AVIdemux. FFm-pegX compresses my footage in a way that I can edit these frames called i-frames and p-frames. I-frames contain an image, and p-frames contain the actual moving pixel information. AVIdemux is a super old editing pro-gram that allows me to take away i-frames from footage. With only p-frames, the pixels will move around on the wrong image, creating inter-esting and amazing accidents.
RESEARCHMindmap
STORYLINELife’s a Glitch
It’s morning time and a small bird is surveying a small hole in the ground, hoping for breakfast. She leans in to investigate when our main character, blasts out of the ground so large he fills the screen with his colorful skin. He flys into the air just like a dolphin would out of water, and falls back into the ground face first. As he collides with the ground, the screen glitches and reveals the main title. We fade into our character popping his head back out of the ground and turning his head, looking for food. He observes his sur-roundings. Our character notices birds flying together hand in hand and even rock forms around him putting their arms around each other. Everyone and everything around him seem to have a second half. But as far as he knows, he is the only one of his kind. As he turns 180 degrees, he notices a beautiful creature, the first he has seen of his own kind, with a bow in her hair. He immediately falls in love as the music get majestic and epic, and we dive into a dreamy sequence of our worm floating in the sky with his lover as rainbows spring from the clouds. His skin glitches all of a sudden and he is back in the ground looking at his new love and the music is gone. He reaches for his love with his head and she ducks into the ground. He stands back confused. He reaches again and again and she continues to duck away from him every time. Each time she ducks his skin and the screen begin to glitch more and more. His face gets angry and we begin to zoom slowly towards him while the music builds up. We quickly speed up into his brain as the music drops and you can see his mind collapsing using ab-stract animations to the music. We quickly cut between his mind and what is happening in the real world as he destroys mountains and digs up the ground forming an enormous crater. Once the dust settles, our character, defeated and depressed, climbs out of the crater revealing his whole body for the first time, with a bow tied around his tail.
STORYBOARDSLife’s a Glitch
Main “worm” character shoots out from beneath the ground and his array of str ipes wipe across the screen whi le exci ted 8bit music begins to play.
BIRDS EYE VIEW: Worm f lys into the air and is introduced whi le b irds soar around him displaying his large scale
As soon as he hit the ground the 8bit music g l i tches arcade sty le and the footage goes crazy to reveal t i t le of f i lm.
Our character pops his head out of the ground as the sun is coming up from behind the mountains
We c lose up on his face as the environment spins around him, looking for something, food maybe?
He spots a beaut i fu l creature, exact ly l ike him, but with a beaut i fu l bow.
STORYBOARDScont.
The camera zooms in on his face as his expression changes from searchful , to awestruck.
Again, we see our character in true bl iss.
He begins to reach for h is lover, but she ducks away from him.
TOP VIEW: As we see the bow s lowly twist ing into the darkness of the hole. Camera is s lowly pul l ing out.
As we pul l out the hole is just a ref lect ion in his d isgrunt led eyes. Camera cont inues to pul l out.
TOP VIEW: Our character begins to thrash and tear at the ground around him. We zoom quickly into the smal lest c i rc le on the top of h is head which turns into the next frame. Gl i tches are happening throughout ent ire “red background” sequence.
FROGS EYE VIEW: Our character l i t f rom below, begins to gl i tch and stat ic at th is instantenous denia l .
He trys again, th is t ime quicker, but she refuses again.
Instant ly, the screen and his skin gl i tch, and you can see he is back in the ground.
Our character opens his eyes, surpr ised.
As we pul l out, we see the ground far, far below our character and his new lover as they f ly to the c louds.
Clouds f i l l the screen as ra inbows popout and our charcter f ly through them in a dreamy sequence.
STORYBOARDScont.
The smal l c i rc le turns into a bubbl ing sphere, spewing out 2D animat ion debr is.
Match cut the inner c irc le with the c irc le formed by our worms c ircular thrashing creat ing a giant crate around him.
Our charcter then crawls out of the crater, defeated, reveal ing the bow t ied around his ta i l .
The music stops, and the dust begins to s lowly sett le.
Once the dust sett les, we see our charcter within the crater, breathing heavi ly, a lone.
Quick cut back outs ide to worms head swinging into the s ide of a mountain.
On impact of the mountain we quick cut back into his “mind” where the sphere cracks into tr iangular shapes that begin to f loat away reveal ing an inner c irc le.
FEEDBACKAfter presenting this first round of storyboards, my professor and class-mates pointed out some essential holes in my story. Without these holes being filled, the story will not capture the audience like I want it to. These holes include, how can you tell that our main character is lonely? Our worm needs to access an emotional connection that we can relate to. Also, how do subtley hint that something has happened to cause the tail to pop out of the ground. This can’t happen in an obvious way, because the viewer cannot know that it is his tail. It has to happen in a way that at the end of the story, the viewer has an “ah-ha” moment, and realized that his tail popped out earlier for a reason.
Some solutions that we thought about consisted of the worm observing his surroundings more intently. He needs to see others falling into pairs, while he always stands alone. Also, the glitch could be an intergral part of the reason his tail pops out of the ground. He could be in some sort of trance, wanting to fall in love like all the other animals, but then bird fls into his face, or a tree falls him and surprises him. The screen would glitch and he would have a slight twitch in his body. That is when he turns around and finds his “new lover.”
Another hole is the destruction “red scene.” There needs to be more of a build up to the mayhem that ensues. The worm can’t just go crazy all of a sudden. He needs to get angry little by little. Maybe start by him just breath-ing heavily, and then hitting a rock with little force. After she denys him more, he could gradually get more and more disturbed and glitchy. This scene is the most important and largest part of the film and needs to be expanded. These are the next steps.
Main Character and SceneEARLIER DESIGN PROTOTYPES
FEEDBACKThese were my first round of character and set design. The set seems to be coming along nicely, geometric and simple, but somewhat intricate. But the worm character is the main focus. The feedback I received included the character should not geometic with hard egdges. In this geometric “pixel” world, the character should be smooth and have a splash of color, since the scene will be somewhat monochromatic. The idea was brought to have the worm’s skin be smooth, with a moving texture. Something like stripes that could also be glitching, signifying the character’s personality. I loved this idea and began to develop a new version of our main character pictured below.
PRODUCTIONSchedule
December 23rd - January 15th
Complete modeling and rigging of any building, character, or setting piece within entire film.
January 15th - January 30th
Animate intro through title sequence
February 1st - February 15th
Animate after title sequence through dream sequence
February 15th - March 10th
Animate glitch and destruction scene
March 10th - March 20th
Animate reveal of characters bow tied around tail
March 20th - April 15th
Create sound design and soundtrack