Major project - Initial thoughts

Our initial ideas was anything based on 'relatability'. The two ideas we had in mind was 'getting up in the morning' or a story about a musician, both expressing the emotional state of the character with the environment. From the feedback we got from the first presentation crit, we decided to focus the idea on the musician, I started with a few sketches and pitch.

The story was then developed into a young girl who is studying music in Vienna, who found the only way expressing herself as combining piano with an instrument from her hometown. We decided that she's a Chinese girl as there's a lot of traditional instrument we can chose from, regarding to the knowledge of our outsourced musician. The characteristic we came up with together was that she is a talented girl who does not have enough courage to express her ideas. Here's some different approach I took and a initial turnaround for the character I did regarding to the narrative.

Major project - Inspirations

Our inspiration came from an animated short called Au Lapin Agile, which established the way of expressing the music/emotional state with environment within the animation. What we decided to do is something about 'relatability' which is largely affected by the graphic companied by a piece of music. We had a chance to work with a MA film music student, Gus to compose the piece for us, so we would work closely with him throughout the project.

This movie extract also inspired us, picturing a shot in the animation with a duet by two of the characters, also helps us to shape the story to a further stage.