18/11/2020
Based on my research, an effective way to communicate to the audience the transformation from sanity to insanity is to create a character that appears to be naive with short hair who ends up insane with long hair and rough appearance overall.
Tai’s character design
For clothing, I wanted to create a sense of unease as well as portray the idea of topsy turvy as things not seeming right. I thought about our attire in quarantine or working at home, where the top half that is shown on the webcam is prim and professional while the lower half that is off-camera is comfortable.
The final design I went with is the first one on the left, where Tai is wearing a neck tie with sweatpants and a cardigan as well as a pair of shoes. The combination of casual and business clothes may seem off or even comical, but plays well into the unease and uncertainty of the pandemic, not knowing when it will be over or when one can go outside but also too anxious to lounge around.
For the environment, I went with a simple white square room like in the moodboard. The room has a TV screen on one side and a window on the opposite side so Tai would have to choose between the two. There is also a small dog door big enough for a tray of food to pass through, but not big enough for Tai to crawl inside of.
I modelled the environment in 3D on blender in order to work out the angle of the billboard filling up the window as well as reference for the different camera angles when I draw the storyboard.
MODEL SHEETS
I tried to take into account all the possible facial expressions and poses Tai would be in and the different angles this could appear in in the storyboard.