Roze Pak

environment by ben,

props and animation by roze

environment by ben

props and animatic by roze

environment by Ben,

animation by Roze.

by Alex, Ben, Roze

ANIMATIC

POC

The initial idea of this short film started from something as brief as a train ride, on my way back home on the SWR. The initial idea of introducing nostalgia and familiarity quickly branched into something more than public transport. To introduce my home town, Hong Kong in this project has been delightful. The brief asked for this to be a short film with a personal element, expressing with my own developed art style and a live action in my home town cannot get more personal. When I think of Hong Kong, a list of things comes to mind. The home, the city, the parks and vegetation. But most importantly, life and art, thus the color green and the theme of plants quickly became my symbol for this city. Almost like the gods have paved my way, I had an upcoming trip to travel back to Hong Kong. Not only would I be able to film in Hong Kong, I also had a companion, someone who was willing to film and be the main character of my film. (I am not photogenic or good at acting). Because I wanted the scenes to pop to create a bigger contrast, we decided for the protagonist to be dressed in all dark clothes. Undoubtedly this achieved the aim by contrasting over the cool muted color palette that I have chosen to animate with. I went into these concepts with a lot of intention and whilst I hit enough of the points, to be happy with the designs I do think there are areas with the potential to be pushed further and will endeavour to do so in my future practice. One thing to be improved on is the timing of transitions during filming. Because I am not experienced in this field, editing took a longer process. Further more, recording good audios is also something I want to work on. I feel like the recordings done on my phone were rather hazy and unclear. Working on collaboration with Samuel had been a blessing. Having a much better actor for the camera made me realised that everybody can pursue a projects thought different strengths and weaknesses. After an in depth walkthrough to him on how I wanted my final animation to look like, I showed him my animatic and concept arts. Samuel even contributed to thinking of the title. Samuel had a few comments on how we should film, differing from my own initial ideas which I greatly appreciated. From that, we took my story board and Samuel’s idea and got to filming.
Because I wasn’t completely sure of how I wanted to animate the plants and vegetation in the film, it took a few trail and errors and, once again, some aid from Samuel. But once I got into the headspace of creating, I couldn’t stop. The first two scenes (intro and park scene) were a struggle, but the last few scenes came to me naturally.
Overall, I am happy with the outcome of the project. I’m happy that the first collaboration with Samuel had been such an incredible and note taking success. I would have struggled a lot more on my own. However, my main aim moving forward is to be more independent even in collaborative projects as I have an increasing knowledge of where my strengths lie and continue to build on areas that presented the most challenges.