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A Person Sits Before A Tidal Wave

2d animation   experimental animation   collage

2024

2D, digital animation

Directed and animated by Sumin Kim

Thesis project from OCAD University

Logline

In order to save herself from a tidal wave, a person has to create something nice and strong.

Concept Development

   A Person Sits Before a Tidal Wave was my thesis project from OCAD University.  As a student with only the final year left ahead, with the next step yet to be found, it felt like I was standing right before a new world.  That feeling of being in front of an unknown world made me want to look back on the world I used to live in, my past.  Therefore, when I was developing the concept of this project, I thought the theme of reflecting on the past and memories would be a nice fit for a thesis project.

A screencapture of a folder full of random images. The backgrounds of the images are erased for the use of photo editing.
The folder dedicated for photo collages, with images from my phone gallery.
A digital sketch of a close-up shot of a person. The person is wearing sunglasses, holding it with her hand. Photographs are edited on the lenses of the sunglasses.
The sketch that I made on the first day of the thesis class during the orientation.

   I had a clear visual direction that I wanted to explore in the project: I wanted to try using reflective or translucent surfaces(ex: glass, sunglasses or the surface of water) to reveal alternate scenes or perspectives, relating it to the theme of reminiscence. And for the alternate scenes, I wanted to add photographs for a spoonful of surrealistic flavour.

Example shots of adding photographs to reflective and translucent surfaces.

   I did not end up actually doing this. As I was working on the storyboard and developing the concept, I ended up enhancing the surrealistic aspect in my project. The photo collage touch that was supposed to be on the reflective or translucent elements only was used more broadly as a component that the main character directly interacts with.

   I had 1-on-1 meetings with 3 professors with the first storyboard. From two of the professors, I got feedback that a giant cat appearing at the bottom of the water might confuse viewers. They suggested me to have the cat appear from the beach side, or have an ocean animal save the person instead of the cat. The other professor suggested that I explore surrealism in my project, since photo collage was in a very close relationship with surrealism.

   At first, I wanted to keep the cat, so I tried adding more of the surrealistic items so that the cat wouldn’t seem so weird. But later on, while I was making photo-collaged puppets, I created this very cute shark-head character! So I ended up putting this shark-head instead of the cat.

A photo-collaged puppet. It is a creature with a shark head, a clamshell, a back of the heand, and a bottle. The legs are composed with tree branches.
A photo-collaged shark-head puppet.

The 1st storyboard:

The 2nd storyboard:

The 3rd storyboard (final):

Colour notes:

Colour Practices:

   I had made a comic in a graphic novel course, and I liked the design of the blue character.  So I kept it as a reference for the character of this project.

   I wanted to keep the simple and fluid contour of the hair, and the lines filling in the area.

Character design sketches: