Max's mini cyber hut

Note the frames completed by Zihui He (Sarah) are tagged with red block at left top corner, others are all completed by Fuliang Wang (Max)

Max’s Reflection: More story design-related reflections are mentioned in the critical appraisal that I should not repeat. Storyboard production-wise, I paid extra care in terms of compositions of the shot, alongside guiding, and the continuation of the focal point of the audience. Through the production, I discovered smoke as a handy tool in terms of guiding the audience’s focal point, for it can obscure unimportant parts and blur distractions, while its movement may then form a ladder to guide the audience to where I truly want them to focus. Foregrounds are also widely used and considered in order to give additional depth to the drawing frame. However, maintaining the continuation of the location of the probs so they don’t just suddenly appear and disappear that ruin the immersivity of the animation was quite an intellectual challenge, perhaps a more theoretical, formulaic approach may be learned or invented to aid future production to ensure it’s easier to think, but maintaining the depth of the frame.

The months-long production of storyboards significantly strengthened my understanding of composition, camera language, and how to deliver a sequence of well-filmed shots. In this decade when AI technology is rising sharply, I believe mastering these skills can ensure my authorship to be maintained regardless of how much AI may evolve and how society responds to the changes, and stories carrying my understanding of visuals can be delivered regardless of production methods.

Most updated Storyboard


Older versions (part made by me):

Due to time restriction and concern over the problem of the style difference between the 2D animation drawing and the 3D background, alongside with time restriction, I didn’t choose to build this perspective moving background in 3D, but decide to use After Effect to make it instead. The trick is to fake the feeling of perspective without give me too much work to do, I decide to use the 3D function in after effect which can calculate the shrink of the size of the object as well as the deceleration it would show visually when moving in perspective. Therefore I produce a grid (figure 2) with perspective lines and focal point alongside with lines marking the rough location of the shelf. The horizontal lines which would be the shelf board is the hardest to make if I want it to move as well, because the perspective deform would be very hard to achieve in a continuous manner, so I decide to leave it stationary (3), and the moving vertical plane would give the illusion of the horizontal plane is moving alongside, had audience not put too much attention to it which they should have focused on the character. Then I put these vertical panels which represent the vertical plane with the books on the shelf, in case the idea fail to work I made the blue and green place holder before I refine them and run them first (video 1), which turn out to be working. Adding a light source at the varnishing point help to disguise the removal of some planes too close to the point that doesn’t worth to consider, making them fade out in the light. The motion is repetitive yet I designed different versions of the shelf so it doesn’t seems repetitive for the audience. Over all it do create the feeling I want, though its imperfect as the perspective movement is not very accurate, take a closer look it’s not hard to see the shelfs actually squeeze with each other, but its not too strange nor I think the audience would realize or care about it too much, there maybe more reasonable way to deal with it but it would be too much work and too much time for the project that I can not offer.