Treatment

Treatment

My film is animated because animation is the best medium for executing the surrealistic environments and characters that the story involves. Settings like the inside of an exploding mind made of symbols and motion graphics require a flexible medium that is capable of going beyond reality and realism. Likewise, the][][ dynamic nature of my characters design make it necessary to use nonhuman actors. In one case one my characters has a galaxy spinning and glowing inside of his body, and in another, geometric images flow steadily from the center of his mind. Thus, in the case of this stories graphic aesthetic, animation is the most sensible and cost effective means of production.

The theme of my story is enlightenment. It illustrates how enlightening revelations can change the way you perceive and interact with the world around you. I have designed three different characters and three different settings. Most notably is the character that represents the mind and the world in which he functions. I have constructed the world out of little bits of iconographic information and strung them together using branching lines that grow to resemble a cluster of colorful neurons. Likewise, the fact that the character of the mind has complete control over his environment, and yet still chooses to work unnecessarily hard to reach is destination, reflects my own psychological patterns. Lastly, the character has bits of information flowing through his body from the center of his head reinforcing his identity and illustrating his function.

My story has three characters. Together the represent the mind, the body and the soul. The body is the most solid of the three, and is submerged in a relatively naturalistic setting. He mainly sits motionless through out the film. This is partially because of his complex design and partially because most of the action takes place in the mind. The mind character acts as a link between the body and the soul. He is the one charged with the "hard work" of successfully navigating through the complex jungle of the psyche. Consequently, his design is more streamline to hint at speed and it is less complex so that he can be drawn fast for animation. The last character, the soul, is fairly complex as well. Like the body, he undergoes very limited, if any, motion.

The lighting in the films beginning is used to symbolize the blinding darkness of ignorance. When navigating through the "personally" uncharted terrain of life, it can be easy to stumble and fall if you can't clearly see where your going. This darkness leads to suffering and the solution is as always the light. Inside the mind it starts off completely dark and then the Invictus establishes a light slightly brighter than the gloomy real world. Eventually he comes face to face with his inner light, that shines like a second sun. This sun is charged with the task of illuminating the characters' life, but first they must be fully integrated and united as one. After this is accomplished, the eyes of the real body start to glow, and he sits in the light of the rising sun which bathes the world in precious golden light granting him a new way of perceiving the world.

Sound will play a major roll in the short. It is my intention to sync the motion of the minds free running to some self composed song. The music will dictate the pace of the editing and the timing of the animation. At present it is my desire to have a song that incorporates strong contrast between a very challenging and visceral sound, with a slow, broken, simple one. This will allow me to accentuate fast fluid movement with softer relatively still scenes. An example of a song that does this is "You make me feel" by Archive. Im not really going for the same sound but I am trying to achieve the same effect.

I will be using 2D because, first and far most, illustration is my artistic strong point. there fore I will be utilizing very detailed drawings with very limited motion in some parts of the short. Furthermore, much of the work will be done in Aftereffects, because the film involves a lot of motion graphics created in Photoshop and Illustrator.