Project Virtual Dream Working Thread

Hello, this is Fan. Welcome to the working thread of my final year project 'Virtual Dream'.

Pre-production stage:

At first, I spend a lot of time thinking about what story I am going to tell. I do have my original character and story, but I did one in my second year, this time I want to make something of others.

One day after a few chatted with my friends, I realized the prevalence of mental illness and childhood trauma. It seems most people especially parents still don't understand Mental illness such as Depression as well as we think. And those misunderstandings will make things worse.

I am not professional in this area, so I am not trying to lecture anyone about Mental illness. This is just my motivation to do some cool fighting scenes😆. But I do hope people stop making an opinion about mental illness so easily, sometimes even silence is better than 'encourage'.

There is the first try of scenes. The fighting is happening in a semicircular space(a simulation world), and it is mostly made the patient's memory and doc's conception of things. For example: if patients have a memory of a bird which is a lovely white pigeon, but the doc is crazy taxidermy, them the birds in the simulation will probably be a bird skeleton.

Since I work alone, I gave up the first seven versions of the storyboard. They are too long. In order to complete the production before June, I have developed a detailed schedule from March.

Character Design:

Production stage:

In the production stage, I made the storyboard and animation with TVpaint, and most shadow and lights are created in After Effects.

I meant to tell a story about tolerance. When the gun used to kill illness turned into a knife that hurt the boy, the Doc began to reflect on whether her approach was correct.

I have received a lot of comments said the story is very complex, which is my mistake in storytelling. But during this production, I also received a lot of experience and notice what I should develop in the future. Storytelling and Camera language are deep and interesting subjects. 

Thanks for all the supports from my family and friends, and of course my tutor Phil. It's been a nice try.