Author: Nara Gomes

Animatics

Proof of Concept

Current Outcome

21st of February 2023.

Initial PDF with Research and development, updated today:

The idea starts with the sentence “tell us something only you can say”. Felt exceptionally inspired by Su-lynn’s briefing that day, and I’m very well aware I’m not the only person that can speak on Candomblé. Still, maybe I am in my course year, in my group, and mostly from my own perspective growing up in Salvador in the state of Bahia in Brazil.

This subject and intention I set up are humongous, great and beyond anyone’s explanation power, yet, is a religion and a set of costumes that suffers from immense prejudice and racism to this day, even though its origins were set up to escape that scenario, therefore, to a personal spiritual and creative level I feel like it’s my duty to bring this to life and share with the world, the beauty and the intense faith that this religion set for all Soteropolitanos (people born in Salvador in Bahia, Brazil), even the ones who don’t personally practice or believe in this particular religion, practice costumes that got integrated so intensely in society through the centuries that became cultural of our people, beyond being solely a belief system.

“Candomblé is a multi-diety religion that believes in the existence of the soul after death. The word “candomblé” means “to dance” or “to dance with atabaques” and it worships the Orixás, generally celebrated with dances, songs and offerings. The Candomblé is the practice of African beliefs brought into brazil by slaves, therefore, it isn’t an African religion per se, it is afro-Brazilian, which means the history of Candomblé merges with Catholicism. Forbidden from practising their original religions, slaves used images of saints to escape the censorship imposed by the church, which explains the syncretism found in the Candomblé practices in brazil.” (Juliana Bezerra, https://www.todamateria.com.br/candomble/ , free translation by me).

The inspiration came from Yemanjá, the Orixá of the oceans, the moon currents. In my hometown, we celebrate her and give offerings to her in early February, so naturally, the subject came to mind. The first idea is to have someone struggle in their daily lives, but while walking in Salvador, find symbols of our day-to-day life, that remind them of their faith.

From a technical side, the character would be watched from the side, and stylistic inspiration came from the movie The Boy the Mole the Fox and the Horse (2022) which has a mixed media approach and a sketchy line art style that I want to incorporate into this film. The idea is for the story to be simple and easy to understand since there might be a narration of one of yemanjá’s tales in the background.

These two stories would align. Let’s now call the main character M28 (male 28 years old). Things that would be mentioned in the narration would appear on the path of M28, he would make a journey (per se, after finishing work, going back home) and would only be seen from a profile perspective, the movie starts B&W and as he finds symbols on his way that remind him on his faith (symbols that would be mentioned on narration), like for example he goes eat an Acarajé (typical food eaten on the daily life, but that originates from the celebration of Candomblé) he takes in colour, and now his clothes are coloured, and this is when I introduce projections and photography into the animation as well.

Later on in the film I want to incorporate stop motion and projection, mostly because a great part of Candomblé is the worship of idols, so to bring this into it, I plan to have the main character in a panic (haven’t decided what would trigger it) fall into the ocean, as in Salvador, there are numerous beaches that don’t have sand, but rather a tall wall that leads directly to the water when the tide is up.

Once inside the water, M28 would then meet Yemanjá, who would (as a siren) sing to him, and bring back his faith. The goal is not to look mystical or fantasy-like, but rather a moment inside M28’s head, of him, remembering the feeling and the origin of his faith, after the scene is done, we see the main character back on land, leaning against the very same wall he fell down in his imagination, looking out into the city sunset. he is now wearing white which will be a little easter egg for anyone that knows the religion and knows what it means for them, could also give the idea of a time jump.

The narration would serve as a guide for whoever is not familiar with said religion, the idea is not to be knowledgeable, but rather be informative and instigating. Yemanjá serves this purpose well for being a siren-like entity, that would have a large lore behind its symbology that most people and children will recognize and know what she represents regardless of their origins.

Next Steps on production:

The next few stops on the list are: trying to find resources, books, and papers but most importantly finding people to interview so have a better understanding on what’s the best approach to this and the most respectful one, what tales of Yemanjá I could source, and what poetry I can use for the narration.

Research on traditional clothes for Yemanjá and studying possible doll models for stop motion, calculating size etc. I aim to make an installation if time is available and need to take that into consideration when making the doll.

I will start character design on M28 and will do storyboard tests and art style tests for the 2D digital part.

Collaboration:

I aim to research traditional music to implement in the project, it would be used for dramatic and environmental purposes, for example, in a tense moment, or near the meeting of Yemanjá or the fall, the character would hear traditional drums and percussion, or the while walking on the street, M28 will briefly hear music from Salvador play in the background (fade in and out, crowd chatter, and more background and sound design) for that I am currently in contact with a handful of musicians that would be willing to produce or give authorization of use of their work.

For the Yemajá Doll, I will be pairing with Sisara Gama, my aunt, that is a follower of Candomble, has Yemanjá as her own Orixá and has most importantly been a fine artist and painter for the last few decades with a focus on craft and design.

Family and friends from home will be helping me source photography and other things needed that I can’t do myself because I’m in London.

The journey I’ll walk you through starts with a client brief. The challenge this semester was to put myself in the shoes of someone who wouldn’t match my gender or ethnic background, so It was clear that research and empathy would be the keywords of my creative process for this project.

Once I saw the brief for the NHS Prostate Cancer awareness project, I chose to team up with my colleague Emma Crampton, who had briefly commented to me that it was in their interest to use paper and practical technics to bring our ideas to life, something I also had in mind. After listening to the NHS audio provided to us, we decided to work around the first minute and a half of the hour-long testimony.

After Tutorials with tutor Dan Saul and brainstorming scenes we decided to come up with a linear story, which had the following transcript as a background narration:

“My dad had prostate cancer when he was 61. He got treated and he lived for another 30 years. There’s been a lot of theories about “why is it so high in black men?” Is it our diet? Is it our lifestyle? We don’t know. But one thing we do know it is hereditary. It’s something that ran in my family. Cancer is a subject that puts people into shock. Especially men. The most common thing we do (inaudible) we pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s probably the worst thing you can do. They feel that cancer is a death sentence, that is not the case. The treatment of cancer, has changed a lot There are many treatments and options available to patients. The earlier the diagnosis the better chance you have of making a recovery.“

(Audio provided privately by the NHS, edited by us with no intent of manipulating or changing the person’s narrative).

The general idea was: we wanted the story to be about family, about co-existing in an honest and love-full relationship with the men in your family, especially your father, while respecting your heritage. It is important to us that the main message put across is safety, we aim to support people in feeling confident and comfortable when talking about a sensitive subject like prostate cancer, which in the end, involves deep, complex, personal and cultural lore around it, one in which we’d never be able to fully comprehend, reinforcing how important the Client Interims were and how lucky we were to have the man in the audio come in person during the final interim to review our films and give us their perspective on how we should portrait their experience.

The Story Board:

The storyboard above was created by me and agreed upon by Emma as the final version of the film. The storyline goes as: a father narrates his family’s experience with cancer, you can see in his house a collection of items that compose his personality, being the frames, the most important part of it, because they not only show personality and add interest to the story, but the pictures depicted (illustrated by Emma) deepens our narrative and give an extra understanding of the story the main character is telling us. In the final film, some scenes had their perspective and shots adjusted to support stylistic choices. Examples of illustrations bellow (By Emma Thomas):

With them, as well as the one on the cover of this post, we wanted to represent life’s high moments and points where this family saw themselves being successful and achieving happiness regardless of their diagnosis, reinforcing the quotes “My dad had prostate cancer when he was 61. He got treated and he lived for another 30 years” and “They feel that cancer is a death sentence, that is not the case” of our chosen audio clip.

The StoryLine:

The main character feels unsettled, he stands up and walks in his corridor full of memories. Images of their house support the audio in between takes like the kitchen close-up and the shelf. As he walks around the house, we understand he is unsettled because he knows his son’s worries. We skip to the son’s perspective and see the frames start to shake and turn until one eventually falls on the floor, meaning the life points, and making us see what type of questions this son (who is an adult) could be asking himself. What is the point? Are we going forward? and other sentiments of frustration and fear. As the main character approaches his son, we see him comfort him and all of the sudden the house is back to normality. Finally, he hands over to the young man what looks like a leaflet, supporting his younger family members to be aware of early testing and feel at ease with a potential diagnosis. All of which are supported by the narration.

Choosing a Style: Mood board and artist inspirations

The original idea was to make a film completely in stop-motion. Emma was gonna be responsible for character design and any dynamics involving the movement and style of characters and I was responsible for background design which involved the choice of painting and texture in both characters and sets. As watercolour is my main art medium we wanted to incorporate it as much as we could.

First look into my mood board looked something like this:

Link to full initial mood board: https://pin.it/7EOTYrP

My initial response was to look into a variety of black men and what their skin, hair and clothes looked like in order to come up with a valuable colour palette, but also possible techniques for the background and for introducing textures.

Emma decided to try a specific type of paper puppet that she sourced from XXXX in the Tiktok Page.

The puppets worked by sectioning each limp and attaching them together with something that would allow movement.

I then reproduced her puppet on high grammage paper and painted it with watercolour. I cut it with an exacto knife and assembled it without anything at the joints just to test it in different poses. On the same day, I also started the first conceptualization of what the main background would look like. The scene was the initial scene with the wall with frames in the background.

The objects were glued to a solid stick foam cube made out of tape that when poked through with a pin, allowed me to move it freely from the wall, but the glue of the tape kept the objects attached to the pin.

After reflecting on the technique versus the scenes, I thought it was best to create a 3D set for the angled scenes, so I created a couple test objects to place in the scene and get an idea of what type of manual labour, how long what techniques it would take to execute it. With pints, cardboard and styrofoam boards I composited the following test background.

After back and forth discussing what we wanted the main set to be like, we couldn’t agree on what we wanted for the style choice. Emma then suggested we worked with a multiplane, technique that would still involve practical animation but wasn’t as complex as a 3D set. She then created a 3D model of the house in order for us to stay consistent, a model which I followed to later create the background.

The next step on my journey was to create the set for the multiple, I started by drawing the furniture at home and bringing it into Campus, once in person, we went to the art store at LCC to try to source as many materials we found useful which ended up turning the project around, having now collage be one of our main strategies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Images:

Image 1: Cardboard Favela by Pamela Sullivan

Image 2: Sheck Wes by David Brandon Geeting for Nike Inc.

Image 3 and 4: making of Isadora Moon by artist Harriet Muncaster