Haikei
A short 3D animation: Reiji lost his beloved wife Mitsuko and long time friend to sickness. Distraught, he reconnected with her through cooking and Origami, the art of paper folding.
Role: UX Research, Visual Design, Storyboard Artist, 3D Animator
Period: October 2021 - May 2022
Haikei: Final film
Overview
Haikei is a collaboration of 5 people to create a short animated film for graduation project, in a span of less than a year, set for the exhibition at BACC (Bangkok Art and Culture Centre) Museum by June 2022. Although our ideas might be different, we share the same goal of creating polished animation that would not only showcase our CG skills, but ability to create a powerful story. Under the guidance of our two thesis advisors, our team worked hard to produce it, where I incorporated the user research to create the best experience for our prospective audience. After having discussed for some time, we decided to choose Japan as main setting for our story, inspired by many Japanese animes we love.
This film is exhibited on 7th to 12th June 2022 at Mai-Sum-Roy Exhibition at BACC Museum, along with many great works, with success due to all the efforts of all the students, professors and many others who have collaborated for the success for the exhibitions.
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Members in the team:
Kan Jittapramoulboon
Thantip Thirajitto
Chayanit Phattarasirikoraphat
Jivassa Prabumrung
Semangoen Phumrattanasupak
Team advisors:
Phisut Laohapitakworn
Chinatip Tangsiripat
Challenges
There are a number of challenges in this project, besides persuading our stakeholders (in this case, our thesis professors) to be convinced why the setting should be in Japan instead of Thailand, where we live, such as: -
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How to make this film about Japanese people look and feel authentic, possibly to the Japanese audience (for some tiny mismatched elements could disrupt the audience's immersion in the story.)
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Make a film with polished look, similar to that of feature film, under the time and budget constraints.
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We want as many people as possible to know about our film and have access to it.
Solutions
After some brainstorming, research and doing the project, the solutions to those challenges are: -
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Research is the very crucial--in terms of the prospect audience (users), the information materials for the story and creating authentic CG. High-quality product will attract more audience.
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Planning ahead for every step of the user's journey. No matter how good the film is, without well-planned publicity about where the film is going to be released. It's unlikely that the launch will be successful.
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Create more access for our film: Exhibiting the film at the museum at the centre of Bangkok, with MC and opening ceremony, could draw people who came to visit the museum. But we also posted it online, for people who couldn't go to see our film onsite on the designated date to be able to watch it later.
Brainstorming and Research
Pic. above: scene from "Together Forever", one of the animated commercials for Marukume Co., Ltd. under the concept
"Ryotei-no-aji" (Premium, Japanese restaurant quality taste), which inspired us to use 'Nikujaga' as the plot device in our story.
Before we settled on a story, we tried to find as much reference as possible, such as films, animations, images, information about Japanese cultures and so on, which could be used to inspire our story and overall looks of the film.
During our research, we discovered Japan has become aged society since 1997 and super-aged society in 2007, with its percentage of senior citizens higher than other countries; it also has one of the lowest birth-rate in the world. Hence, we decided to pick this fact, and developed a plot line.
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What would happen if a childless senior couple, who loves each
other very much, loses his loved one?
Japan has the world's oldest population
aged 65 or older
29.1%
In order to find an interesting and meaningful ways to tell the love story between two aged Japanese people, we attempted to find symbolic from Japanese cultures, to connect them with our protagonists.
Origami
'Origami' is the art of Japanese paper folding that has been practised since Edo Period (around 1603 - 1867)
There are many meanings for different shapes of Origami. Butterfly is one of them. According to the Japanese, butterfly means transformation, and also the change from the living to death. It is also believed to help solve life mystery.
So, we used butterfly origami as a symbolic of Mitsuko's passing away, and her attempt to cure her husband's sorrow.
Cuisine
Japanese is famous for its cuisine, which has a long history and has emphasis on true taste of the ingredients, especially seafood, die to Japan being an island country.
Aside from traditional Japanese food washoku, there is also yoshoku, Japanese food influenced by the West. Nikujaga is a Japanese version of beef stew, influenced by the version served in the royal navy.
We chose Nikujaga instead of something prevalent like tempura, curry or sushi to give some
unique look. And this dish is colorful with colors, such as green from edamame, yellow from potato, orange from carrot and brown from beef, to signify colors in life of Reiji. But after losing his wife, Reiji would attempt to bring those colours back again through making this warm dish.
Interviews
I conducted some informal interviews with prospect audience such as my friends in Japan, my animation classmates and many more to get some of their opinions about a film, concerning old Japanese couple, and the plot points we will use in the film.
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Some of the main concerns are that I gathered are, due to different upbringings, will the atmosphere of the film look real enough to make viewers believe that the couples are real Japanese people, who live in Japan. Because even the tiniest of weird elements could disrupt the whole mood of the film. Still, we are not discouraged, because this problem could be avoided by heavy research. And we did a great amount of research, ranging from clothing, food to even what is how they set up the name of the dead on the Buddha Table inside the house.
Personas
After gathering sufficient data from the interviewees, I mapped out the personas, for everyone in the team to have clear who our target audience, into 3 personas. However due to some constraint and limited knowledge about persona 3, who is Japanese, members in the team decided to focus on Persona 1 and Persona 2 due to easier access for testing later.
Empathy Map
After creating personas, I created empathy map, based on the interviews I made from people to understand their feelings, pain points and opinions better.
User Journey map
After empathy map, I created user journey map to illustrate how each experience's with our film and exhibition from start to the end. The touchpoints and pain points listed came from the some interviews with the users, and from discussion by everyone who would exhibit their work. This helps reduce frustrating experience that might occur along the way, and ensure the best experience as possible.
Comparison of exhibition methods
The exhibition isn't only the effort of our group, but also the collaboration of everyone in our Visual Effects major that year, so we have to discuss together, how to encourage more audience to be able to access our work, including our film Haikei, because that would increase publicity of everyone's work and interest some companies looking to recruit new staff.
And after considering the journey of the user, we realized that the some frustrations as inconvenience in travelling on site, or finding the time to see the work at the museum, could be alleviated by giving the
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There are pros and cons, to using onsite exhibition and online exhibition: -
Onsite Exhibition:
Pros:
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People are more likely to pay more attention to our film. (Most audience alloted the time, and travelled to the site specifically to watch the film)
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Opportunity to explain the concept and inspiration to the audience in-person
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Can attract people who happen to visit the museum.
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Create impact, with well-known MC to for the opening ceremony for the exhibition.
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Cons:
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More expensive
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More time and energy needed for preparation (Contacting the museum, transportation, organising the staff to standby the exhibitions)
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Audience cannot watch our film, unless we release the work later online ourselves.
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Online Exhibition
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Pros:
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Save cost
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More convenient
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More people, who aren't available, can access it.
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Easier to share our film to the others
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Cons:
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Less impact to the audience
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Audiece are less likely to be vested into the film.
And after considering the journey of the user, we realized that the some frustrations as inconvenience in travelling on site, or finding the time to see the work at the museum, could be alleviated by having both option, exhibiting the films onsite, but also posting them online later.
Character
After drafting some script, we got 2 main characters: Reiji, the old Japanese man, and Mitsuko, his beloved wife who would pass away due to old age. After getting the full body sketch from my teammate Chayanit, I went to sketch different emotions for these two characters to reflect their different personalities, and for a reference for character animation later on.
Screenplay
After our team has discussed the overall story from start to finish, I started writing a script. At first, we were unsure whether to make the characters mute, to get rid of the language barrier. However, after some story treatment, we were unable to deliver the stories we wanted without some voices. After our advisors helped polish the dialogue in Thai, I translated them into Japanese, and asked Japanese linguist and my friends who are currently living in Japan, to check if the Japanese dialogue is natural and accurate.
Storyboard
After the screenplay was finished, I started doing some rough storyboarding with Adobe Photoshop to illustrate some ideas into clear images. Some character's behaviours and interactions have been refined through ideating and testing with our advisors and test audience, to validate if the story and idea is good enough before we carried on into 3D production.
You can see from the comparison between each version of the storyboard how itieration has been done over time, to adjust the transition between the scene, to get rid unnecessary scenes, and make Reiji, the male protagonist,'s character more taciturn to make it contrast with the end, where he finally found his wife's messages.
Storyboard: Version1
Storyboard: Version 9
The playful character has been decided on Mitsuko (Grandma) instead to reflect her game of searching for things in Origami
Animatic
After storyboard, I cut each shot from storyboard and edited them using Adobe Premiere Pro and added timecode, to see the overall look in motion. Sometimes, it is difficult to imagine if certain scene is too fast, or too long until one sees it as a VDO. In here, I added some rough sound effect to add the general mood to each film.
At this point, the title of the film in production was still called 'Dear you', until we changed to 'Haikei' later, where Haikei is the word beginning the letter used by Japanese, so we agreed that it would reflect the tone of the story better.
Development and production
After the user research, and some process of pre-production, I am also responsible for layout, rigging, 3D animation and some editing. While my other teammates are responsible for other parts such as modelling, texturing, dynamic simulation, and composition.
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Below is the overall pipeline of animation production.
Image of CG production Pipeline. From facebook.com/CGMeetup
My teammates and I used the the information from the research we have studied for creating modelling, texture and so on in oue film. As an animator and rigger, I had to test them whether the character could express feelings like what we sketched, and I also referred to VDO reference of old Japanese mannerism, as well as character sheet to keep them in character.
After rigging with Advanced Skeleton in Autodesk Maya, I would test the rig, bt trying to emulate the expressions drawn in the character sheet.
Feedback and user testing
Throughout our development of the film, we tried to have test our work as often as possible, for the best final results, from testing the early concept until before the final cut of the film.
Below is the sample of my chat asking my friend in Japan for feedback for the early concept design of the clothing of our two main characters.
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After testing with the audience and editing until we are satisfied with the final products, and ready to release our film for the exhibition and on site. We also created a poster and some key visuals to post on Facebook page to promote our film online.
Final Product and release
Before the release of our film at the exhibition at BACC and online, we also created a poster and some key visuals to draw the attention of the prospect audience on Facebook page, and those who would come to see our work on site. You can watch our final product at the link below.
Results and takeaways
Our launch of the film at the exhibition and online was successful. Many audience heard about the exhibition from the Facebook Page, and many of them are interested in our work. Our short animated film went on to win several awards, including Rangsit University's VFX Thesis Award, Digicon6 Asia Thailand Gold Award and so on.
Besides some praises from visitors who visited our exhibitions, and commented how they could relate to our story and the quality. We also received other posive feedbacks from our Youtube Channel in different languages from the audience around the world, citing how they felt touched and could relate to the story despite the cultural difference, especially the japanese audience who felt vested into the story with no elements that would distract them. Such feedbacks are so heart-warming to me and me teammates, for it proves that our research and effort throughout the year has been successful.
I am so grateful to be part of this amazing team, and work under the guidance of my two wonderful advisors. This project wouldn't be as wonderful as it is without their guidance.
Some important takeaways I learnt from this project are: -
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Research is crucial to the success of any project: whether it's research about users, or the audience in this case, and what they want from the experience or research about the materials for creating a product such as this film.
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Communication and collaboration leads to great work: Even though you have differences with people in your team, it is best to work out that difference and listen open-minded. Great work cannot happen without the collaboration in the team.
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Design Thinking is in everything: No matter how good the product is. Without thinking about users, it's difficult to be successful. Even in film making, planning a good user experience is also as important as creating a great film itself.
