CHRYSALIS
Moving Image
For my submission to the RSA Student Design Awards, I chose to work on the Moving Image brief entitled ‘Fashioning a Circular Future.’
Approaching the brief, I felt that I needed a character — some device that that I could weave through the narrative of the animation. Through my research into fast fashion, I came across the ‘Butterfly Diagram’, a version of the circular economy model with the basic form of a butterfly. This image jumped out at me and, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that a butterfly was the perfect device. It’s a creature that transforms — just as fashion transforms, and as the voice-over is asking fashion designers to change their ways. It’s an integral part of nature, while toting vibrant aesthetics that could almost be compared to fashion.
Approaching the brief, I felt that I needed a character — some device that that I could weave through the narrative of the animation. Through my research into fast fashion, I came across the ‘Butterfly Diagram’, a version of the circular economy model with the basic form of a butterfly. This image jumped out at me and, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that a butterfly was the perfect device. It’s a creature that transforms — just as fashion transforms, and as the voice-over is asking fashion designers to change their ways. It’s an integral part of nature, while toting vibrant aesthetics that could almost be compared to fashion.
With my character decided, I went about storyboarding the film. I knew that the transitions were key to the success of the animation and spent a lot of time planning them. I wanted to keep the theme of transformation and change throughout; even in the edits from one shot to the next.
I developed a style that was both textural and inky - to refer back to fashion, material culture and design. Following some early animation tests, I went for a frame rate of 8 frames per second, rather than the standard 24/25. This gave the animation a more stop motion, hand-made feel — and helped to reinforce the ‘back-to-basics’ theme. Speaking of stop motion, I also included some traditional animation techniques into the film, both hand-drawn and plasticine.
The textures throughout were vitally important to create a warm and soft tone to the piece and I experimented with the pace and placement of them to get them just right. If they were too fast, they made the piece feel ‘stressful’, while too slow but draw attention away from the focus of the animation. All the textures were real fabrics that I scanned or photographed; wool, denim, cotton and more.
I did add some subtle sound effects to the finished piece; mostly created my manipulating various forms of paper and card. But I kept these to a minimum as I did not want to take from the voicever.
I incorporated actual fabric patterns into the designs for the butterflies; plaid, herringbone and so on. Finally, the animation finishes back where we started, created a fully circular narrative.
I incorporated actual fabric patterns into the designs for the butterflies; plaid, herringbone and so on. Finally, the animation finishes back where we started, created a fully circular narrative.
