Birthday Surprise
Directing | Storyboarding | Animation | Writing | Character Design | Background Design | After Effects
This is the second student film we made in our second year in college. The story takes place in space. While the other crew members of the ship are trying to organize a surprise, the birthday star encounters something weird outside the ship.
Storyboards
I was in charge of most parts of the storyboard. A few of the panels weren't drawn by me.
Animatic
Full film
Character design
Background design
Monster design
During the development, I wanted to have a scene where the astronaut encountered a floating corpse in a space suit. So I spent some time figuring out the theory behind the scene.
What I had come up with, was that this type of alien-like creature is capable of drilling through the hard surfaces on the helmet. They can drill a tiny hole in the helmet, squeeze through it, and kill the astronaut. Then they lurk in the remain of the corpse. When other astronauts make any contact with the corpse, they feed again. Sometimes they meet their kin in the process of aimlessly drifting in space. They form into this weird rat-king-like position. Just to make them more eye-catching, and increase the chance of contacting humans.
This is what would happen if these creatures have access to a whole ship of human flesh. They take over the host and control their body to crawl outside of the ship, in order to make themselves more bizarre and increase the chance of being approached by other humans.
Other DV sketches
(birthday related)
It had always been intended to have the crew cook up an actual surprise for John (the birthday star), and I came up with some idea of what the surprise was, and some funny scenes that eventually didn't make it into the film.
What you are seeing are multiple handcraft pieces that are supposed to reference the face of John, the birthday star.
You can see balloons, macaroni, paper plates, and even a mop being put to use in these sketches, even though it's not realistic to have easy access to those things in space. Because my top priority is to make it look genuinely ugly, but when received by people, they just can't deny the efforts and passion behind it.
We had an idea that John, the birthday star, is fond of old, wacky, and poorly-made sci-fi films. So I did some sketches of the big birthday card that referenced the films John loved.
I also like the idea that Laura is the artist among the crew. She treats the assignment so seriously that she is the reason why they have to figure out a way to stall John. Because as ugly as the result is, her craft needs to be perfect.
