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| This animation is based on an Eastern Asian tale I
read once many years ago in a school book. I was deeply moved by this short tale, but have only extremely vague
memories of it, so this is not a faithful adaptation. |
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| We did
the storyboard together, then my workmate dropped out of school, so it ended up as a solo thing. Fortunately, my friend
Thizir lended a hand by painting the sceneries (encore merci!). |
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| To download, right click and "save link target as". |
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| The Final Animation |
| (lasts 4min30, weighs 39 megs) |
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Characters and sceneries hand-drawn/coloured.
Film and lighting effects added on computer. |
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You need the latest codec to see this, download
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If you experience bad
quality images with your usual player, try reading it again with the divx free official player.
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| (plot spoilers drawings follow) |
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| Original Characters Sheets |
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| Lei |
The dragon |
The lake spirit |
Lei's family |
The thief |
| Painted with watercolours and Chinese ink. |
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| Original Landscapes Sheets (realised by Thizir) |
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| The house |
Inside the house |
Inside the house 2 |
The lake |
The skies |
| Painted with watercolours. |
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| The storyboard (team work with Quang) |
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| I chose "Lei" as the main character's name,
because I thought it sounded beautiful (of course) but also because it means "rain" in Chinese, and he is strongly
linked to the water element. By extension, it became the title of the animation, "rain" being a very rich word, often used
as a metaphor for sorrow in Europe or as a purification of the earth, a gift from the gods in other cultures.
All these connotations fit the story and its hero perfectly. |
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| To design the characters, I looked at many traditional
Chinese brush paintings's characters, in an attempt to get inspiration for giving a more ancient melancolic feel to the tale.
For the colours, watercolours seemed the best medium, as they offer great luminosity. Once again, I avoided vivid
colours, and tried to keep to the ones most recurring in traditional Asian paintings: toned-down, subtle colours,
in a very limited number, which confers great harmony. I used ocre browns as the main colour, because it was the most
recurring one in those paintings. |
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| For those wondering, the wonderful music from Michiru Ohshima,
which I used for the animation, is taken from the great Japanese videogame "Ico". It suits the mood I wanted to convey, sweet
and melancolic. Also, it features the voice of a young boy telling his story... very much like Lei would be
telling his. |
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