All that's left is the retina burn and the sonic shock, just an afterimage...

One of the coolest things about animation is that you can do ANYTHING. But you need to speak a language that people can understand in order to convey any kind of meaning. In film, the standard ways of conveying a sense of 'looking back' is done through flashbacks, and I think that needs to be part of the animation - move away from a linear story narrative into a more complex time sense. There needs to be some back-story to flash-back to. Perhaps use muted washes to convey the misty sense of memory. These could be used in the satori sequence instead of just using random computation representations. I definitely want to get a sense of a fevered, electronically enhanced mind working away during this sequence as well; not sure how compatible the two things are. The real catalyst has to be emotionally evocative. I still like the ending: a memory of nature that is getting pixelated. Need to make it more personal, more powerful, more to the point.

I think one of the ways to convey the sense of 'realization' is to have a profile shot of the protagonist, eyes closed, head tilted up towards the ceiling, mouth open, tense, zoom out until the reflected image of the protagonist is just a black dot, and then hold that for a couple of beats, then slam back into a closeup of the eyes as they are opened wide, replacing the dot with the pupil and then zoom in like mad into the pupil. Perhaps echo the 'glowing white' pupil image here momentarily.

I've also been thinking about playing around with the whole eye imagery early on, perhaps using old TV test patterns (sweeping / color wheel) in place of the iris.

The trick in all of this is to keep it general enough so that it could mean many different things to many different people, but still keep it personal enough so that it has emotional resonance. I have no idea what I'm really getting into at this point, except that it's WAY over my head. Just need to start sketching and riffing on some of these ideas, find out what works and be open minded enough to let this thing breathe it's own imagery out of thin air. I consistently find that the less 'rational' I am about creating something, the better.

Trying out some ideas as drawings

Night Cityscape



This is just a rough sketch using mainly the Microsoft Acrylic 'palette knife' strokes.

Same drawing with motion and radial blurs applied (done in Photoshop). Not sure which one I like better:

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"Burning bright like life..."



I was hoping that the simplicity of drawing edge lit faces would be both evocative and efficient. Well, it succeeds on both counts, but it's WAY too dark and sinister. NOT where I want this to go. Time to rethink things.