This is a project about ‘Autism’ and I was inspired by a fellow student
who has autistic tendencies: but on a deeper level, I think I was
motivated by ‘wanting to change that’.As I wrote in my project proposal,
I like work that focuses on improving relationships between people,
and autistic people are right in the middle of a world where there is a
serious lack of care. I can’t stand this situation.
I want more people to understand this special group and the pain they suffer. Because if you can’t even understand each other, how can you talk about making a difference? It was with this in mind that I created this project: it is called ‘Cinderella’s Dream’.In order to clarify the main idea of the project, it was necessary to carry out research..
Shinbo Akiyuki has been active in the front line of Japanese animation since he joined the industry in the 1980s. His distinctive and bizarre style of animation has always pushed the boundaries of what is possible in commercial animation.
Shinbo started his career as an animator in the 80s and became an animation director in the 90s. But his experience and skill did not allow him to achieve immediate success, and Shinbo experienced a decade
of decline until the release of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which he directed in 2004.
In terms of performance, Shinbo often uses a different approach to Japanese animation, including a lot of shadows, close-ups of eyes and stills, as well as extreme contrasts and strange, flamboyant colours.
There are also a number of subtle features that link to his work along the way, including crosses, body chains, simple line structures, flocks of birds taking off, megaphones and, more recently, the 45 degree sideways head movement known as the SHAFT angle.
Shinbo’s overall style is to expect the viewer to think about the meaning behind the images as they watch, and therefore sometimes blurs the space between locations and images, so that the viewer does not always receive the message clearly and is entertained by the imagination.
While watching Shinbo’s work, his great control over the image quickly caught my attention: the director clearly knows how to use all sorts of unexpected elements to grab the audience’s attention. In his animations, I could clearly see many scenes and objects projected from reality, which meant that his style of acting was simply challenging the very concept of animation, and it was clear that Shinbo was having fun with it.
There is no doubt that Shinbo’s work has provoked a lot of profound thoughts in me: in the context of the evolving times, will “crossing over” between different fields of animation become a reality?
At a time when 3D animation technology was on the rise, with the emergence of WALL-E, Toy Story and a host of other popular 3D animations around the world, there were predictions that 2D animation would soon be replaced. This is true today, many years later, but the truth is that 2D animation has not died out under the impact of new technologies, but has taken a very different path with the new era of technology, such as 3D-assisted modelling, which is widely used today.
It is therefore entirely possible to merge technologies from different areas of animation, and this is the direction Shinbo is taking, with some success.
If I had to nominate the greatest commercial animation of the 1990s, one of my choices would be Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the director of this work, Hideaki Anno, will undoubtedly be etched in the history of Japanese and world animation, and he is one of my idols.
Both as an animator and as an animation director, Anno’s abilities have been witnessed by the world. A number of senior figures in the animation industry, including Hayao Miyazaki, consider Anno to be a rare talent.
As an original artist, Anno was particularly good at mechanical and special effects work, and less so at characters. The explosive scenes Anno paints have been named “Anno Explosions” by fans of the medium, and are characterised by high velocity blasts of wind, many scattered delicate fragments, shifting fireballs that interact with each other, and weighty clouds of smoke.
He specialises in selfish and ugly psychological depictions, detailed mechanical shapes and bold visual performances. Unexpected camera angles and backlighting are often used. In addition, ephemeral shots of poles, wires, signal lights, barricades, road signs and emergency access are often inserted into the work.
Yet as with many other great animators, Anno’s talents as a director and writer are even better. In my opinion, he has a knack for portraying the darker, more vulnerable parts of the human mind, especially in adolescents.
But this portrayal is not simply straightforward, but is embedded in Anno’s elaborate storyline: a storyline that could be wrapped up in a myriad of rich and magical historical, legendary and religious stories. Only when this seemingly grand veneer is removed can the audience see the figure at the heart of Anno’s story: the figure of a lonely young man.
Anno’s work has had a profound impact on me for a long time, and the animation aspect is just one part of that impact. More than just beautiful graphics, what I see in his work is a philosophy and concern that goes beyond animation.
I can feel in his animation his profound thoughts on a range of heavy topics such as the world, society, country, nation, self and personality, and this is exactly what I want to convey to the audience through animation: I hope that I can one day use animation to convey my thoughts to the world, just like Anno.
For this project, I read and watched a range of autism-related artworks, including but not limited to books, films and music.
They helped me in many ways: my own ideas became clearer as I noted down and reviewed the highlights of each work. But on the other hand, there are limitations to this research: as each work has a different focus, each one provides me with only fragments of inspiration, so it takes me a lot of time to integrate and assimilate them. Not to mention the amount of time I would have to spend viewing the works themselves. It follows that it would probably be difficult for me to choose this type of research again if I did not have sufficient time in the future.
The end result is that I have concentrated my research on the work of the three artists mentioned above. They all specialise in different areas of the animation world, and there are many wonderful and surprising differences in the work that has made them famous, but there is one thing that they all have in common: they are all good at looking at the darker, softer, even crazier, uninhibited side of human nature and expressing it in different ways through their animation.
I think this approach to characterisation was very helpful in creating the “psychologically ill (not just autistic) protagonist” I wanted. A typical example of this is Shinji, the male protagonist of Anno’s hit film Evangelion, who lost his mother and was abandoned by his father when he was a child, and the absence of both parents in his upbringing had a huge negative impact on his personality. His characterisation is different from any previous cheerful, brave male protagonist and has been criticised and loved by many as a result.
Based on the previous research, I started to create characters that fit my story.
This may sound strange, but I have always created characters before stories: I think that an interesting character will run itself through my pen and interpret an interesting story.
In the early stages of character design, I consciously let myself forget about the subject I’m working on at the moment: not because I want to be reckless, but because I want my mind to be as relaxed as possible and come up with the “answer I want most”. Is my protagonist male or female? What stage of life is he/she in? What are the biggest difficulties he/she is facing right now? What does the protagonist of this story want to convey to the audience? In what way do I need to convey the main idea of the story? What kind of character do I need to create for this? I wanted to create a character without the burden of trying to create a character, rather than designing a character with a distinct purpose: I think that would make the character lack a distinct ‘sense of authenticity’.
With this in mind, my initial character designs are often bizarre and illogical. I sketch out simple outlines with lines and fill them in with various ideas to get some prototypes of the character. And with these characters, either cute or weird, I can imagine the roles they will play in my stories, the adventures they will have (or the trials and tribulations they will encounter). From this explosion of inspiration, the one that best fits the theme of the project I need to make will be chosen.
The ‘atmosphere’ conveyed by different styles of drawing varies greatly. Simple, bold lines can give a stronger sense of movement, while delicate lines can enhance the overall finish of a picture. These are the kinds of insights that come from experimenting with different styles of drawing. I think it was the ‘choice’ that was more difficult for me than the amount of time I put into the painting afterwards: I had to go over my ideas, and indeed the theme of the project. I had to ask myself over and over again: what do you want to convey to the audience?And at the end of this reflection was born this character, Ruggiro.
Deciding on the character design for this project was not easy, because I wanted a character that was not a distinctive individual, but a ‘shadow’ that was representative of the majority of young people.I wanted the audience to see something in the character that resembled themselves, or to be able to relate to the traits expressed in the character. I wanted the audience to see in this character a resemblance to themselves, or to be able to relate to the character traits of this character. In other words, I wanted to design a character who is the ‘shadow’ of most modern young people. As such, she looks feminine and fit, but has a masculine expression and posture. She has short, clean-cut hair and dresses in a sexy way. She also has a healthy, optimistic smile on her face, but the headdress she wears on her head has a melancholy look, which is indicative of the darker moods within her.
Initially, when designing the room, I only wanted to make it relatively simple and plain and have a similar look to most people’s bedrooms.However, when I revised it later, I chose to make the room more dirty and grey in order to deepen the feeling of darkness and decadence, and to suggest that the main character is a bit lazy. At the same time, the position of the window was adjusted to take into account the effect of light.And having established that the main subject of the story was the heroine in her early childhood, I again changed the design of her room to make it look more suitable for a young girl from a privileged family.
The change in the colour of the moonlight from light white to blue also came about in the course of designing this scene.It is worth noting that there are a large number of Animatic’s in this project that I did not use due to the constant revision of the Storyboard. Therefore, I have uploaded a portion of the images that I have already finished drawing about the background here as well.
As I mentioned earlier, I think the most important thing to reflect on is my own ‘mindset’.
I believe that my own work is too easily influenced by others, and that often my intentions change and become distorted in the process. This is the reason for the many revisions to the Storyboard in this project. In the weekly workshops, I have to show my progress to the group, but when it is early in the project, there are inevitably many gaps in what I am presenting or parts that are not clear.In such circumstances, it was unrealistic to expect a favourable response from others, which was also the case: most of the advice from students and tutors was “I would have liked to have a clearer understanding of the story”.
This was very good advice, and it was invaluable to me, but I could not help but feel a sense of self-doubt. Whenever I see a Storyboard that has not received a positive review, I feel an overwhelming sense of disgust that urges me to revise or even destroy it and create a new story that is more satisfying to me.The process of discovering and analysing my inner self has undoubtedly taken up a lot of my time, but I don’t regret it for a moment. I think that whether or not this mentality is a good starting point, as long as it inspires me to keep pushing myself to produce better work, then it’s the right thing for me.