The Dreaming Veil
The Dreaming Veil is a collaborative animation project centered on a woman, referred to as MC, who is struggling in her day to day life, financially and socially. Feeling heavy weights of exhaustion, she tries to use sleep as a form of escapism from her reality, but it’s within her dreams she is forced to face that reality. Pulled into the fantastical reality of her subconscious by a shadow entity, MC faces off with Queen, the ruler of this world, who pushes her mind to its limits through challenges that imitate her struggles. She must confront herself and triumph if she wishes to wake up again.
Script Writing
As my thesis semester was cresting over the horizon, I knew I wanted to have some sort of animation telling a story that wasn’t as fantastical as my previous. There was an idea that I had daydreamed into being a while ago whilst listening to the song Snowy by Itzy, with small bits of a story. I decided I would go back to that idea and flesh it out within a script where I could explore themes and ideas without the worry of wasting time.
The script went under many revisions to reach this point and thus sparked the beginning of the collaborative element of this massive project. Sitting down with a friend to bounce ideas off of and get writing tips allowed for the storyline to be fleshed out in both a meaningful, and fluid way. The research being interwoven into the characters and the various dream like elements that reoccur in the story.
Character Designing
Whilst working on the script, I allowed for the actions the characters take in the story to inspire the designs and elements that would appear on the designs. Knowing the animation will be without dialogue meant that many points of the context and connections needed to be more visually obvious and therefore easier to pinpoint. For example, Queen having a diamond be her main shape and therefore all of her minions, or beings under her control, will carry this same symbol.
MC
MC’s real world design is of a waitress to push the idea that she is working a physically and mentally taxing job for low pay, which is some of her main stressors. Her dream design is in reference to a jester, with the main interpretation being that she is the entertainment and subservient to Queen. Finally, MC’s transformed outfit is still a play on the idea of a jester, for although they are considered lowly, they hold their own power in how they are some of the only people from that time period who could make fun of royalty. The idea was for her to embrace her identity, albeit not the best one, and make it her own so that she was more comfortable in it. An added element is the similarities of her design to both Queen and the Entity’s to form a more subtle connection of the roles to one another.
Entity
Entity was originally made as a justification for the story to progress and was simply a shadow, but as the script writing progressed they took on a new role. For the idea of ‘the shadow’ in the dream is to be in opposition to a dreamer’s ego, and I wanted Entity to be that opposition but not necessarily to just MC. His design is designed to push the idea of a shadow, but also to show a slightly disconcerting, alien figure for it’s hard to tell if they’ll be on your side. Their symbol’s a mix of MC’s awake/dreamer and Queen’s sleeping for their existence, lies in both.
Queen
Queen’s design has heavy inspiration from clown/circus’, and the Queen of Hearts. The circus theme emerged from the symbolism clowns have within dreams and the connotation of masks and what are hidden behind them are the repressed and undesirable traits. The mask is designed to reference clowns, her skirt a circus tent hiding the mount she rides for why would a person ruling on the backs of her underlyings need to walk? I wanted to play into the idea that she has minions by placing them in her design and create a hierarchy between the power dynamics she aims for.
Mice
Speaking of her minions, the mice came about based on their symbolisms in dreams as well. Mice representing gnawing thoughts and chipping away at the consciousness. It’s why they don’t make a large appearance until MC is taking charge and Queen wants to wain her mind by having the mice attack her. The simplicity of the design was happenstance and done to not bring too much attention to them. As for the transformed states, the Bigmaus, what I refer to the large mouse as, was made with the intent of creating an imposing creature sort of like a guard dog to the Queen. Emphasizing their importance in both their size, and the symbols adorning them. The largest diamond tying to the Queen and a bigger power, and the crescent moon on their back in reference to Entity. A callback to the mouse Entity pulls into the puddle. As for the other minions, most are decorated in circus attire but simple as they were more meant to be in a swarm rather than standalone.
Storyboarding
With the foundations being set in the script and designs, the next step was to start blocking out shots and general timing, one of the longer parts of the project. At this point the collaborative side of this project went into overdrive. Still taking on the majority of the work, I assigned scenes to my team members with nothing but rough thumbnails, allowing for their interpretations of the script to add a new perspective to the work. Then with the help of the editor, we timed out the boards into a rough video. It was also at this time I was working with a sound composer to make custom music in time with the storyboards. Keeping the throughline from my previous workflow, we worked on each character having their own sounds/themes and playing with overlap and push the idea and feelings of each scene.
Rough Animation
Next came the longest portion of the project, the rough animation. Nothing too special happened during this stage, with my animators we spent many weeks with different assignments going back and forth on timings for the whole animation, ensuring to get something done for all portions. It was at this point where there were the most moving parts, animating, meeting, critiquing, working on sound, and much more. At this point we reached the first deadline of the solo shows and I wanted to have something, although unfinished, to have for the show. For then following this exhibition we would have a week to reach an untouchable end product. It’s when I came to the conclusion that trying to do a clean up phase in the traditional sense wouldn’t work and instead the rough animation will be most of the final animations. It was the goal in the beginning for the dream sequences to be rough and the real world ones would be smoother, but this time limit enforced that idea.
Clean Up Animation
Once the exhibition was set up to a satisfactory state, my team and I jumped into the deep end and got to working on the clean up that had 8 days to be completed. The main bulk of the process was inverting the dream sequence to have the dark backgrounds and white lines, and color blocking. It was at this point I was grateful to have a team as this task would be impossible otherwise. After many long days, and a hard push on the night before everything needed to be done no exceptions it came together in its final form, and we all exhaled a collective breath and slept.
Credits
This project wouldn't have gotten to this stage if it wasn't for my team so massive thank you to them:
Mike Gasaway
Sara Sandfort
Gabriela Infanzon
@mikasa.arts (insta)
Karin Komarova
@komarikk.art (insta)
Lily Runk
@strwberry._.tie (insta)
Nia Hooten
Isabella Morris
Carder Rohe
Kari Gemrich
@fishsticc_doodles (TikTok, insta, tumblr)
Simon Noble
Ian Marr
@imarr20 (insta)