Legend of the Red Cliff
Project details
- Year
- 2020
- In collaboration with:
- Wolfer Freijsen & Lesley Blom
- Programme
- animation
- Practices
- Autonomous
- Minor
- Public & Private
Project Aim
The Legend of the Red Cliff is a concept for an animated series that adapts Dutch folklore tales and other historical stories from our country. The target audience of the series is children from the age of 8 to 14. The project thrives to reignite passion into the folklore of our own country, in an age where only Disney fairytale features achieve daylight in the hearts of children.
Story
Duna (Witch in training) and Joris (Knight in training) must journey through the Netherlands, experiencing the mysterious and mystical to learn how they can defeat the dragon Duna accidentally released upon the world.
The Origin story is based on a Frisian legend (De Legende van de Roode Klif) where the earth erupts multiple times on a cliff setting free a dragon, which terrorizes the towns around it. Throughout the Animation series, we want to include several of our nation’s craziest myths and folklore to provide a rich experience for the children watching.
Teaser
I worked on this project together with my fellow animation-students Lesley Blom (Worldbuilding) and Wolfer Freijsen (Concept Design). My function was primarily as Storyboard artist, and puzzling the story together for the first episode of our series. Together we made the teaser you see above.
Storyboard Animatic
I’ve made the first episode as my deliverable into an Animatic. To be specific: An Animatic/beat board hybrid (Beat boards show the general action of a scene within fewer pictures).
This ‘animatic’ serves as proof of concept, and as a study combining both my research from fairy tales together with my love for storyboarding. The teaser group deliverable serves as a proof of development and concept, to be used for future possibilities.
SHORT ANIMATIC VERSION
(With sound)
FULL ANIMATIC VERSION
(Still without sound)
Practice Research
My practice research was all about researching fairytales and their deeper, hidden mysteries. Understanding how they use symbolism, and how I could implement this in my own story and storyboard as well.
The character of Duna I wanted to be a young girl, as a lot of young females in fairytale stories from the past (Little red riding hood, Alice in wonderland etc.) are on a journey of coming-of-age. Reaching a stage where they want to explore more in the world around them, which added to our own
story of a journey.
The character of Joris is based on the typical ‘dumb hero’ in fairytales (Golden Goose etc.), which are always the youngest brothers in a family. They can be viewed as stupid or simple by other characters (or reader) in the story, but still, they end up with the princess. In the theory of M.L von Franz, she mentioned how this character represents a good honest person, the one most in contact with the earth, someone who sees things as they are and therefore can see solutions to problems which others overlook or are too lazy to see.
PROCESS ANIMATIC