I love your Ulysses animations so so much. I think I watched the "I know you're a goddess" and the "This is my goodbye" one on a loop probably thirty times each since yesterday. The facial expressions are so good.
The way his shoulders tilt the opposite way!! The hands/arms movements in general!
This is my goodbye:
the mean smile when he says "this way you won't plague my life" when five seconds ago he called her his friend and now he says he chooses to cut her out (because she threatened to do it first) and he keeps looking so sad all throughout even when he's mad and defiant and you can just feel that they care about each other (or that he cares about her. God feelings are harder to grasp) and are mad with the other I just love it so much and I feel so sad? They feel like they're taking cheap shots at each other just to hurt but they're only able to (or only need to) because they just care so much and I am so there for getting my heart ripped out like that. So, yeah, I love that smile.
the shot where she's behind him and bends to talk to his ear!!!!!!!!! I just - it's so pretty! Not in a… I dunno. Pretty might not be the right word. Powerful? I just absolutely love it. It talks straight to my hindbrain.
also Athena's design. The not-quite-humanness of her face (her eyes! (how much room they have to narrow to slits when she's pissed!) her mouth! the line economy, contrasted by Ulysses' scruffiness). Her sheer height. The way she tilts her face arrrgh I can't I just love it so much.
the way they just spent three full minutes screaming at each other but he still looks gutted when she leaves.
(for context, this is the first I hear about the musical it's from, I just, like, read the Iliad and/or the Odyssey long enough ago that I forgot most of it and have passing familiarity with the overall plot and a few select scenes but not much more)
Wait actually I wanna talk about some frames agah
So with these frames specifically. On the first one, I wanted him to look like he's searching her expression for any shred of remorse or regret or anything to hint that maybe she cares. Then he turns away, bitter, when he finds none.
This was the frame that got me to make the animatic. I really wanted to draw this out so that's why I started the whole thing haha. I wanted two things out of it: 1. Power imbalance. Their relationship is always gonna pretty unbalanced in terms of authority and power alone. She's a Goddess and he's a man, it's clear who's got the upper hand. 2. I wanted it to look like she was speaking directly into his ear. To show it as a cold, calculated action, and also to have it be emblematic of when advisors or generals whisper strategies to the king. She might have once done the same action to guide him, but now she's doing it to tell him she's done.
So you've probably already caught Telemachus, Penelope, Polites, and Astyanax in the frame. But also. Also. Since this appears in the line "you're just a man", it's like. It's not quite the ghosts of the dead, since Penelope and Telemachus are there. It's more an embodiment of his loss, his weaknesses, really. What he's already lost and what he still stands to lose. He's just a man because he cares and he loves and he yearns. It's his ruin as much as it's his reason to keep fighting, at least in her eyes.
