Alone

Production Diary
Logline: Follow an emotional journey of the man, left alone in his never ending
routine, forced to observe the perfect life of his happy neighbours.

Initial Ideas, Story and the Script

For this project, my main goal was to create a relatable story that explores such
common themes as isolation and loneliness.
Synopsis:
The main character of Alone is a single man, whose life seems quite static and
uneventful, as every evening he goes through the same routine. Having no one
to share his dinner with, the man starts observing the silhouettes behind the
windows from across the street. From his observations, he soon realises that he
is the only person who spends evenings by himself, whereas every single one of
his neighbours seems to be in some sort of relationship. Feeling pressured,
isolated and jealous of his neighbours lives, the man reaches the final point of
his despair. At the end, the audience is being shown that the whole time, the
second silhouette in each window was just an optical illusion, created by the
objects within the flat. The entire time, the mans neighbours have been having
dinner by themselves, showing that everyone had to go through the same
struggles as the character himself.
The objective of the story is to show, that collectively people deal with the same
problems, except we choose to keep everything to ourselves, making us
individually feel like we are left alone in our struggles.

In terms of narrative, it was important for me to show the change within the
main character, as his attitude changes from annoyance to despair. Despite the
fact that the script was finalised on the early stages of pre-production, later on,
some changes have been made to the story. For instance, the initial idea was to
finish the animation with a slow zoom out of the camera, exposing the entire
building with the silhouettes in each window. The illusion was planned to be
revealed with a fade out of the front wall. Being a 2D animation, this kind of shot
would have requited additional technical preparation and 3D animation would
have had to be incorporated. The addition of a different medium would have
required extra precision as all the elements within the scene need to look
organically. I decided to come up with a different solution that, in my opinion, will
shorten the production of the final scene, while maintaining the same emotional
impact. As can be seen in the animatic, the finale consists of the series of cuts,
starting from the close up of one window and finishing with the long shot of the
entire city. This kind of approach also allows the viewer to understand the reveal
of the illusion behind the silhouettes better, which is a vital point of the story.
In order to make sure the illusion behind the silhouettes can be understood
straight away, I decided to make a test. I used easily identifiable objects such as
books and flower pots, to make sure the eye register what is happening within
the scene straight away.

THE VIDEO FILE OF THE TEST: https://vimeo.com/198725386

Character Design
At the beginning of the working process I had a quite clear idea of what I want to
make my character look like. I was always attracted to the idea of the dissonance
within the appearance and the moral characteristics within film characters, so
this is something I was trying to achieve with the hero of my own story. I wanted

my character to feel heavy and massive, while still being able to make the
audience feel sympathetic towards him.

The initial moodboard

colour+ anatomy inspiration

A series of rough portraits was done first, before I started shaping his physique.
Despite the fact that for the first month I was quite confident in my design
choice, after taking in consideration the provided feedback and rethinking the

mood of the story, it was decided to reshape the character.

This time, I first drew the

silhouettes of the character, later
defining them and giving them
more features. Unlike with the first
approach, this method allowed me
to be more creative with the
overall shapes of the character.
The silhouette I decided to
continue to develop seemed to be
the most fitting, as despite his
body being closer to the shape of
a square, rather than a circle, he
still remains likeable. In
comparison to the old design, this one also looks a bit more creative and
unusual, which is definitely a plus, as the visual aspect is very important to my
film.

Then, following the same principle, I had to design the characters face. Unlike
with the old design, where the characters face is symmetrical and looks a bit too
polished, the new variations show to be avoiding the symmetry as much as
possible. I didnt want to constrain myself to traditional shapes and tried to
experiment, making the faces twisted and highlighting all the imperfections.
Faces number 6 and 8 felt the closest to the overall physique of the character.
After consulting with my peers and tutors, number 8 was identified as the most
likeable one and made the majority feel sympathetic towards it. Despite such a
drastic change within the physical appearance of the character, I still decided to
stick to the initial colouring approach. Instead with the later design, the colours
and the shadowing became more solid and clear, whereas at the beginning the
felt a bit more textured. Choosing to stick with the solid, strong colours and dark
shadows brings the dramatic effect to the visual aspect of the story, creating a
dark mood and highlighting the feelings of the character. In the silhouette
schemes that I drew earlier it can be seen, that the character is drawn without
any outlines. In the production, I would like to spend as much time as possible

on animation and the layouts, yet animating without outlines could be a bit time
consuming, as in this case the clean-up and colouring need to be done with extra
precision. Therefore, as can be seen in the turnaround below, I tried to find the
compromise and decided to maintain the lineart, while giving I the blue colour
which still fits with the overall colour palette.

Despite the fact that the audience will not see the mans neighbours true
appearance up until very end, I still felt like giving their design some character. I
wanted them to be quite similar to the main character, following the same visual
pattern and united by some aspects of the design: crooked shapes, dramatic
shading and solid colours (blue, black, white and pink). The reason behind that is
to highlight the fact, that everyone in the city has to deal with the same
emotions, and despite feeling isolated, the main character is not alone in his
struggles and is not different from his neighbours. It was very important to make
sure that all the characters felt like they belong to the same universe, while still
being identifiable on their own.

Environment Design
At the beginning of the project, my main inspiration was the scenery of Brooklyn
and the work of Scott Willis and Lou Romano , in particularly their contribution to
such Cartoon Network shows as Samurai Jack, Power Puff Girls and especially
Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends.

ILLUSTRATIONS by the earlier mentioned artists

The backgrounds of these shows look extremely stylised and involve lots of
unusual patterns and solid colours, giving the composition an illustrative feel.
This is something I was trying to achieve in the early concept art of the project.
Some of the illustrations I produced felt too flat, therefore, additional artwork was
created, where the scene feels more spacious and the city looks bigger in scale. I
tried both solid and textured colours when colouring my artwork, but I felt like
having solid colours in the scene makes the work looks more finished and
defined. As the time passed, the palette has been changed to darker colours, as
before it felt too light-hearted. Despite many changes, colour blue still remains
dominating in all compositions that have been produced, due to the fact that is
often associated with sadness/loneliness.

The previous illustrations did not feel like the right representation of the world
that the character lived in, therefore I decided to continue my research and
expand on my reference library. This time, instead of aiming to produce an
illustrative composition, I started searching for inspiration in the more graphical
field. The pictures below (found on pinterest) have been the most crucial to my
project, as they encouraged me to experiment with bolder colours and stronger
contrasts.

Here are the thumbnails I produced, based on the research that I have done
earlier:

Even though this time the colours and the monochromic tone of the composition
finally matched the mood I wanted to deliver in the story, it felt like the
composition was still lacking something. Therefore, after developing one of the
thumbnails to the final concept art, I decided to add a completely contrasting
colour: pink. In the future, I would like to use colour pink as a representation of
the companionship that the main character desires, but cannot achieve. In the
shots with the main character, colour blue stays dominant, whereas when his
neighbours appear in the frame, blue is instantly being replaced with pink. This
will help me to show the drastic difference between the lives of the man and his
neighbours. After the optical illusion behind the silhouettes is revealed to the

audience, blue again becomes dominant colour for all the characters within the
scene, to highlight the fact that everyone is equal in their struggles.

Going back to the final and the most accurate to this date visual representation
of the story, it is possible to notice, that unlike in the thumbnails, in this concept
art not all the colours are bold. The pink shadow on the floor is in fact textured,
which felt like a nice compromise for my own struggle of choosing between
illustrative textures and graphical cleanliness of the colour.
All the objects within the scenes are, just as the design of the main character,
crooked and have their imperfections. I was trying to avoid the symmetry as
much as possible, to make sure that the characters and their surroundings are
complimenting each other as much as possible.

As the majority of the film takes place in the kitchen, it was important to create
the space that felt like a part of the characters personality. Instantly, it felt like if
I wanted to emphasise the mans loneliness, I had two routes to follow: to either
make the flat untidy or, on the opposite, make it look completely empty and
sterile .

Thumbnails

Early

concept of the
room(felt too
spacious,
therefore was

declined)
I
decided
to go with the second choice, in order to attract the viewers
attention at the window, that the character likes to look through in the evening.
The other reason for that was to show how busy the man is, as he does not have
any time to stylise his kitchen and just chooses to use it more of a necessity.
First, I tried to plan out the layout in isometric perspective, but choosing to
thumbnail the environment made the process a bit faster.

Going back to the characters routine, smoking is quite important part of his
schedule. Therefore, I had to think in advance what I would want the smoke to
look like. The middle design in the first raw is the easiest one to animate, but
this choice could be changed in the future, depending on how fast I produce the
character animation. Even though I like most of the variations, I feel like some
designs look a bit too exaggerated for the cigarette smoke, therefore I eliminated
the possibility of using it from the start.

Animatic and Editing Approach

Visualising the story was perhaps the most challenging and difficult part of the
entire working process. Storyboarding in its traditional sense didnt quite work for
me, therefore the entire animation was quickly thumb nailed on the sticky notes.
This made it easier for me to instantly get rid of the shots that did not work for
the story, without spending too much time on drawing them. After that, using the
thumbnails as my own reference, I started developing the animatic itself.

Montages are an important part of the story, as I had to show that the character
needs to go through the same routine and set of actions every single
evening. As I am producing the animation by myself, time is a very
important factor for me. Therefore I had to stay realistic with how much
actions I can physically animate myself. This problem has been partially
solved with the approach Edgar Wright uses in almost all of his films: fast
delivery of information in a very short period of times through the rapid
cuts. After analysing his works like Scott Piligrim Vs The
World and Hot Fuzz, I decided to try this kind of
approach myself. The analysis did not stop on the works of
this particular director, as I also took in consideration the
montage of the close up actions in Requiem for A Dream. As the story goes on,
the actions (boiling water in the kettle, preparing cup noodles, lighting a
cigarette) become faster and faster.
As for the portrayal of the character, the film Her and the TV series Mr
Robot have been a huge influence. In Her, the subject of loneliness is a
fundamental film of the plot. Moreover, in Mr Robot Dominique ( FBI
agent) is often shown to feel isolated and lonely. For both of these
characters work becomes some sort of the escape.

Even
though we
dont get
to see the
character
of my story
working, I
tried to
imply that
work
occupies
most of his
time, and
evening
are the
time where
he has no
choice but
be left
alone with
his
thoughts
and
sympathy for himself.