First Storyboard and Critique

Sylvie Chen
May 15, 2017
2 min read

After read the book Animated Storytelling, the initial structure of my story just came up to my mind. Following by the instructions of the book, I wrote some key words which related to my animation on some Post-it papers. At the beginning, there were totally 24 messages spread on the wall, including homeless, bad life quality, evil boss, depressions...etc. Besides those negative elements, family bound and heirloom were also the points that I wanted to combine into my story.

However, by considering again and again for making a best choice, my ideas changed into keeping only 11 crucial infectors in the film. I wish that the audience would regard the animation as a dark, depression but a meaningful piece.

At the first critique, my storyboard was simply described into three pages. The main character is a Taiwanese youth who just graduates from a college. He is exactly the victim who suffers form the low-wage payment phenomenon in Taiwan. In order to evoke the sympathy of the audience, the background setting of the main character is miserable and hopeless, his father already passed away and his mom was diagnosed as a cancer patient.

In the end of the story, the main character go to see his boss for asking to raise the salary, but he fails then drops down from the building with the face of desperation.

Sue thought that there were too many messages contained in my film, also, the background setting such as a sick mother, a poor financial circumstance were too cliche to the audience. She advised me to rethink about the structure of the storyboard then started the character design.

Steve said that he liked my idea of crystal, which identified the passion and dream of the youth. But I need to identify the position of the film for whether it's art animation or political information film. Also, he gave me some advices about the graphic language style and a reference of human right association-https://www.amnesty.org.uk/