The Calming of the Weeping Blossom

After suppressing it for far too long, it’s about time for the blossom to burst.

Intentions as the Artist

The message I intended to convey is about the suppressing of emotion and particularly, about the healing properties of letting go. Honoring emotions and just letting them happen rather than keeping them in. As a highly emotional and sensitive person, this is a subject matter that means a lot to me . The creation of this film acted as a sort of art therapy, allowing me let my feelings out in the form of my art. Letting go and opening up is represented in the symbolism of flower, present on the characters person and one of the only coloured elements of the film. I cant really explain my choice for flower and colour symbolism other than this is what came to me. I use my art and filmmaking as a form of just letting out whatever I've got floating around my head, and this is how I imagined it.

I collaborated with a composer for this film (I've credited her in my film!) , who created a music track composed of two parts, one that complemented the very tense and suspenseful first half of the film, and one that was a lot calmer and bittersweet for the second half. These pieces of music, combined with sound effects that fit each part of the film, reflect the emotional journey the character undertakes. The soundtrack truly compliments the film I believe.

For the overall aesthetic, I went for something minimal, with only the very most important parts of the film to be in colour. Even though it's a digital 2d animated film, I went for a painterly, traditional art feel of ink and watercolour on paper. Again, it just sort of came to me like this. To create this aesthetic I used a paper texture as the background of all my shots, brushes that mimic the texture of an ink brush and watercolour for the coloured elements of the film.

A "One Sheet" Concept Poster. The final style of the film differed slightly from this original concept.

Challenges in the Process

The most challenging aspect of creating this film was in the animatic stage, getting the timing right. I originally intended for the film to be between 30 seconds and a minute, since I only had my semester (a few months) to complete the film from start to finish. However, as I began planning my film in the animatic stage, I quickly realized that wasn't nearly enough time. The buildup was too quick and the ending wasn't long enough for the viewer to be able to breathe and absorb it. So I spent quite a bit of time in the animatic stage, lengthening my film, drawing out and adding different types shots so the cuts look varied and not so jumpy. I also lengthened the end, allowing the viewer time to take it in. It was definitely all worth it in the end.

All this to say, though my film has a minimal aesthetic, quite a bit of work went into it. The film relies heavily on editing to be impactful, so a decent portion of the work went into perfecting the timing.

A few storyboard/animatic to final look process shots :