#cycledw

[thecycleanimation]

Characters

When we had the guest speaker, Malcolm Sutherland, he had mentioned that he thought the two creatures were the same but one of them was the elderly one and I thought that was interesting. Originally, the giant creature was inspired by white radishes while the berry was simply just…a  berry. After thinking about what he said during that week, I thought it would be darker if they were indeed the same type of vegetable. This decision had also influenced the characters’ colors, they would remain similar with minimal differences. For example, the leaf on their heads would be a slightly different shade of green while the other berry in one of the final scenes would have some facial differences to make sure that the audience realizes it is a different one.

[thecycleanimation]

Storyboard/Animatic

During the early storyboard and animatic development, the giant creature had less character: he originally did not comfort the berry before eating him and just walked away towards another bush after doing so. After some feedback, it was said to possibly raise a question in the audience of leaving things unresolved. In the final version, it was altered so that the berry’s unhappiness was resolved: the creature would pat him on the head to comfort him until the berry smiled again. 

Additionally, the final scenes also changed: instead of eating the berry right away after being comforted and having the creature looking around for its next victim, the creature would throw the berry in his hand with a lack of interest and then notice something in the distance: another bush with another sad berry. He will then finish the “job” by eating the berry but not without making the audience hear the berry’s scream one last time. 

Finally, instead of seeing the creature walk towards the other bush, we will hear his footsteps fading away to suggest that he is going to his next meal in the credits. These additional scenes are to give the audience a better view on the relationship of the two creatures and to make them think: “oh, maybe he isn’t going to eat him after all” while also making the final scenes seem like less of a rush of things happening all at once.

In the scene where the creature first tries to eat the berry, there is an added scene in the final version where we see the berry being brought to the creature mouth from the perspective of inside the giant’s mouth. This is to make the scene feel more gruesome for the berry and the audience.

[thecycleanimation]

Background

During the production of the film, I had also decided to change how my backgrounds were going to look. After doing the animation test, I did not like the way it looked: the background was flat and had black lines outlining the surroundings (the tree, grass and clouds). It had looked far too simplistic for my liking and despite that my film was simple and straightforward, I wanted the backgrounds to be more detailed. To find what I wanted them to look like in the end, I looked up some images of forests to have a better palette for the colors of the forest. Finally, in the post-production of the film, the backgrounds are not too simple and busy. They look more painterly than what it looked like originally in the animation test and contrast well with the characters.

[thecycleanimation]

Colors

In the pre-production of my film The Cycle, I had originally written in my proposal that there would be a play with colors where it would go from cold to warm colors, in addition to the film becoming more colorful as it progresses to reflect the berry’s health. However, I did not end up going through with that idea because it was unnecessary and did not add anything to story since it was already straightforward and simple. In the end, I did not even take colors too much into consideration for the characters as I had come to appreciate the aesthetic of the lack of color with the two creatures, especially after trying multiple shades of red, purple, green and yellow. I tried these colors because I had thought of berries and other vegetables.

[thecycleanimation]

Title

Originally, the film’s working title was The Outsider, but it potentially gave the impression of making a suggestive and deep philosophical comment on the nature of humanity and xenophobia so it was changed into The Cycle after putting much thought into it. This title was more meaningful as it was telling us that the creature repeats these actions of grooming the berries in order to eat them and in a way, it gave more character to the creature instead of seeing him as an “outsider”. I thought this title to be appropriate since it does not give away the story until the end of the film and sets up the audience for the ending.