The Project.

For my explorations, I really wanted to make an AMV (Animated Music Video) of my characters. I had already picked out a song, which was “The Moon Will Sing” by the Crane Wives, and had already been planning this AMV for the last couple of months. I started my AMV super early, on May 1st exactly after finishing my documentary animation very early, and finished it on June 1st, taking me exactly a month to do so!
Why an AMV? I have been doing animation for years, but I have never animated an entire song, let alone a three minute and forty second one. In about a years time, I want to start making an animated series for one of my worlds, which I call Reborne Earth. Since my world is very complex and rich in story and characters, I thought it’d be best to show some backstories of characters. I chose Earl and Awers for this, as my online audience is most familiar with them and my channel is based on Mydrotica (one of my countries).

Story

There is a LOT to break down here, that I couldn’t fit into my presentation! Please excuse any weird formatting! First off, here’s a map of my world.

but the only two countries that are important for this project are these two: Mydrotica and Paxyo!

Characters

The Lore!

Mydrotica is a very culture, religion based country, believing that Bob (see above for characters), is a god, sent to protect them, just as Earllistar did with the Ssernoss people (I won’t explain them too much, but they were a country that collapsed a couple hundred years ago). Mydrotica mostly consists of dragons, dragon-likes, or lizards, as many of them are descendents from Ssernoss. Paxyo, on the other hand, is a very diverse, atheist country. They are heavily science and technologically based, serving as almost the opposite of Mydrotica.

Before my AMV starts, Mydrotica has collapsed. Bob, their God and religious figure, mysteriously dissapears. This leads to a panic. “This is exactly what happened to Earllistar! It’s doomsday! We are all going to die!” Sort of thing. Most people leave, but many Mydrotica loyalists stay, including Earl.
This leads to Earl’s and Awers’ initial fight. Awers does not like Mydrotica, she never felt welcome here, doesn’t believe that Bob is any god at all, and has dreamed of escaping her whole life. Awers wants to go to Paxyo, and asks her sister to come with her. But Earl doesn’t want to leave, she loves Mydrotica- it’s her culture, her home, and it’s always treated her nicely. Earl asks Awers to stay and help rebuild. At the climax of their argument, Awers leaves. Earl did not know at this time that she would leave forever.

Awers moves to Paxyo, where she is welcomed with open arms. She settles in, and during her journey, she vlogs all of it, uploading to (placeholder name) Paxyou. It’s not shown in the animation, but she ends up becoming a very famous vlogger, as many people found her migration story very fascinating. A couple years later, she meets Terrasol, and long story short they fall in love and get married. Life is great for Awers, much better in Mydrotica, and she doesn’t look twice back. Her sister made her decision.

Earl stays in Mydrotica and helps rebuild with anyone else that is left. At this point, she makes a lot of friends and people see her as kind of the leader. Later on, people would essentially vote on Earl being the new Queen of Mydrotica: she is charismatic, strong, and a dragon, fitting all the boxes! Even though she’s about to take on a huge role, she can’t help but miss her sister all these years. Is she safe? Did she make it to Paxyo? Does she have a home? A significant other? All knowledge that Awers took away from Earl. Earl wants to reach out someday, but right now is not the time. She is crowned, and it’s what everybody wanted.

The Final Product!

Details you may have missed!

I put a TON of effort into the storytelling and visual side of this project- which after presenting, I realized a lot of people did not notice these! Here are some for your entertainment.

• Most of the shots that Awers is in are “dull” or grey-scale. This is to symbolize how her life without Earl is more boring!
• Awers and Earl wear the same hoodie and pants in the beginning. Awers’ always lived in her sisters shadow as her parents only wanted one kid, so she was often put to the side. She tried to be like Earl a lot to appease her parents, and this includes wearing the same things as her. Later on, when Awers lives by herself, she starts wearing what she wants!
• Earl has dyed hair but Awers does not in the beginning. This is because her parents did not allow Awers to dye her hair when she was a teen, she ends up dying her hair pink-purple when she moves to Paxyo.
• There is a lot of window symbolism! In the end, Earl looks out of her window to Awers’ closed one, which symbolizes that Earl wants to reach out to Awers, and is waiting for her to respond.
• At 0:33, Awers is “opening” new doors for herself, while Earl not only stays in the same place, but new people are entering her life (especially later on).
• Earl continues to wear her hoodie and sweatpants throughout the entire story. This is because she literally does not change as a person.
• The line, “I could have been anyone, anyone else”, is foreshadowing to how Earl doesn’t feel confident in her position as Queen. With Awers, she could have literally been anyone else.
• The line, “Ten years worth of dust and neglect”, is foreshadowing to how Awers does not talk to Earl for almost 15 years, “neglecting” their relationship.
• The line, “Instead, you hoarded all that’s left of me”, is Earl reminiscing at how Awers leaving left a hole in her heart.
• The chorus, “The moon will sing a song for me, I loved you like the sun” is the most important part of the animation, and explains their relationship well. Even though they are apart from each other, they are still connected by the chorus and the people in their lives.
• The Sun, Moon, and Stars are the main three symbols in my story. While the Moon and Sun part is obvious, I animated stars glistening in the background sometimes.
• The ghost/spirits of Awers and Earl respectively haunt the two. Awers is literally haunted by Earl’s spirit, and sees her despite not wanting to. On the other hand, Earl cannot see Awers’ spirit, even though she wants to. Awers’ Earl spirit does not have eyes, this is because Awers always felt judged by her sister. Despite not having eyes, Spirit Earl always had a judgeful stance anyways. This isn’t very obvious (due to my artstyle), but Spirit Awers doesn’t have a mouth, this is also supposed to symbolize that Earl wants to hear what Awers has to say but can’t.
• Fun Fact: There is only one reference to Baby Earl in the entire animation, and it’s at 0:43 in the background advertisement!
• Fun Fact: On the day of presentations, I wore a sun and moon light jacket (?), with star arm warmers.

And more! Just look for them 🙂

The Presentation!

Reflection

Overall, I think my project turned out fine. I worked on it too long and I felt very stressed in the end to reach the deadline. A lot of my friends like it though and I learned a LOT about animation, grit, and tweening especially! All three skills I’ll be using in the future for my animations. Here are some sub segments from my overall process.

TWEENING IS THE GOAT!!!

Artist using tweening app discovers tweening, I know I know. I’ve been using ToonSquid for almost two years at this point, but I never explored tweening besides the basics. In my hell hole that was walk cycles, tweening genuinely saved me so much time and made the animation process ENJOYABLE. I cannot express how much I’ve learned about transform hierarchys and bones due to this project. I will use both of these things in my future animations (especially bones! Those subtle movements are AWESOME!).

No seriously, why did you choose to do walk cycles?

I can’t remember.
I know, so anti-climactic! My original idea was that it would show them “walking” (literally) through life, and also a way to show a time skip (like when Awers goes through her immense glow up), and how they changed over the years (or didn’t!). The walk cycles, are, fine, I wish I was a little bit more creative with the scenes in general but I like the storytelling behind it. With Awers, she goes through an immense character development, and becomes more of her true self. With Earl, she doesn’t change at all (other than growing into adulthood), same hoodie and sweatpants that she wore as a teen. But! Even though she didn’t grow herself, she helped the world around her mend (as seen by the broken houses turning into fixed ones!), as she wanted. If I could redo this project, I would probably add a montage of moments from her life instead of a walk cycle.

Poetry

This unit in English was probably my favorite unit so far. It felt so carefree in a sense and it was made really simple to us which made me feel really good about my writing an exploring poetry. Poetry can quite literally be anything and everything, you can write it and format it in any way, and I found that really fun and enjoyable- especially since I learned a lot about my writing process from my documentary.

Ms. Moore was a lovely poet and a lovely speaker to have over in the English classroom! She was super nice and you could really tell she was a poet haha, she complimented us very specifically and I think we all had a blast having her over. Through her poetry workshops, I learned more about different types of poetry (Ars Poetica and Cento poems), here are the two I wrote below!

When we started to write our final poem, I decided to make a new one. I don’t exactly remember why I decided to do this, I believe I just wanted to write some more poems! Here are a couple more drafts I wrote.

Makeshift, Mistaken Stars

Sometimes I feel as though there are fireflies inside of me,

Rushing and gushing to get out of here.

And I wish I could come with them too,

How often I imagine myself with wings to fly,

In deep black night sky,

To shine upon the ground below,

To be mistaken for a star.

To be smaller than this body, 

To take up little space, but

I find myself trapping these flickering stars, inside of 

A jar.

Am I jealous?

Perhaps, but I can’t help myself in seeing

Them a part of me,

Or me a part of them.

Maybe I am jealous. The 

shining lights disappear,

And I’m alone in this room as I’ve always been.

Colorblind

I think I’ve never seen color,

Because I’ve always seen everything in black and white.

I don’t like something,

It must be black.

I like something,

It must be white.

What is color? Just something to see with our eyes?

I believe colors are a feeling,

In these words and in this page I’m writing, 

Colors of purple and dark hazy blue,

Though for you, it could be

Colors of golden yellow like the white sunset, or

Colors of deep forest green, like the black bugs.

After all, colors are a feeling, I think, and

White is devoid of all emotion, while 

Black is overwhelmed with it.

Hollow

I’ve sat						lost
By this line, for a while.			scared
I don’t remember				alone
For how long,					forever
But I can’t help but stare			searching
At the abyss,					in the
On the other side.				emptiness.
I see the shadows				we
Who clash					fight
And bash					kill
And eat each other				to
And themselves,				survive
And I can’t help but,				who
Reach out every once in a while,		are you?
To receive no reply.					
And I can’t help but wonder			You
If I used to be there,				were us
A hissing shadow,					fighting	
Clawing and biting and gnashing,			killing
Eating them and myself.				to survive.
I don’t want to leave them. 				don’t leave
I feel the need to stare				don’t stare
Or help						don’t help
Or save them.						don’t save
But for now, 						we are
I sit,							lost, alone
By this line, for a while,				forever.

In the end, I decided to settle on the one on the bottom! I wrote this one in my head (the first stanza) while I was trying to take a nap, actually. The poem is about a lot of things, but what I’m willing to share is it’s mostly about my creative “spark”- which I talk about in my explorations as well. “A Broken Flame Inside a House” is about using creative outlets as an escape, but how those same creative outlets can cause you to become just as lost or consume you entirely (similar to my AMV). However, you can interpret it how you wish!

A Broken Flame Inside a House

It’s dark. 

Quiet, in this room that I 

Should call my home, 

but what is a home? I have lived 

My whole life here silently. No,

I haven’t found it yet. 

It’s dark.

I light up a flame, and

See my face for the first time

In a few years. I try not to dwell on 

The dark features on my face,

Instead, observing the gentle flame,

Dim, but enough to spark a

Feeling inside of me.

It’s light. 

What they never tell you,

Is that the flame grows ravenous. 

Feed it too little,

And it becomes dark.

Feed it too much,

And it consumes you.

I can’t look away,

It’s gentle flames,

Eating something inside of me.

I tried to keep my poem production very monotone or “chill”- but not sad. I kept my visuals relatively dark (as the poem goes!) and picked a song that I felt was relatively slow and quiet and portrayed the tone I was going for. I think overall, my poem conveys the meaning and spirit of my poem well, the only thing I’d maybe change in the future is the pacing a bit. For this production, I also really wanted to do some small animations. I thought it would give the poem more of a personal and “alive” feel, compared to using stock images or static graphics. I also really wanted to put text on screen while my poem read along. While I originally was going to animate every single word, that proved too difficult with Premiere Pro so I opted to only animate the words that really mattered- and the ones that I wanted to stand out the most! In the end, I think that was a much better option visually.