Proposal

Proposal

Our project "Smashed Beauty" will explore the relation between two and three dimensional animation, real and unreal in a surrealist setting.
The main character of Smashed Beauty is both a real and fictional figure, whose look is the main theme of the short film.

The story line is a closed narrative:
four papers sheets are hanging on a glass wall, behind which people walk past in a street. A hand starts drawing a little girl on the first sheet to the left, and when it's done it moves to the second sheet. There it starts drawing a figure that is similar to the little girl, but more abstract. The hand moves to the third sheet and draws an even more abstract and deformed version of the little girl, and when it draws the last version of it on the fourth sheet, the drawing is totally abstract, composed by geometrical figures.
The hand leaves the room, and the abstract geometrical figure on the fourth sheet falls down on the floor from the two-dimensional paper, becoming a three dimensional figure and disappearing from the sheet. The geometrical figures reunite into a little geometrical monster.
The little monster glances at the third drawing and approaches it. She stops in front of it and starts modeling herself in order to looks like the figure on the third sheet. When she sees the second drawing she stops in front of it and starts modeling herself again, in order to become less deformed. As she sees the first and original drawing she does the same, modeling herself until she becomes a little nice girl, as the one who's drawn on the first sheet. When she's done, a foot smashes her down to the floor, leaving on the floor a deformed two–dimensional drawing.

The self-modeling of the figure suggests a surrealist, magic and not rational narrative, mixing it with the real presence of a hand at the beginning. The action in Smashed Beauty is not a series of cause and effect. It is a series of reaction of the fiction world to the actions of the real one.

The project will be filmed in stop-motion, both during the two dimensional phase and during the three dimensional one. We will use a blue screen and transfer the footage into after effects for the further elaboration of the background.
During the shooting in stop motion one of the animators will cover his arm with a piece of blue cloth, in order make an abstract presence out of the drawing hand. The human presence will never be stated as such. The hand and the foot smashing the small figure at the end will be represented more as objects and indipendent characters than parts of a real human being.
Even though the narrative cannot be considered a classic one the end will bring the character to both the start of the short film and to the start of the three dimensional rebellion.
The clear ending is in fact a double ending (the little figure becomes three dimensional and beautiful, than gets smashed and turns into the two dimensional little abstract monster). We will try to give a hope for an happy ending bound to the aesthetic aspect of the story, and than smash both the hope for the obvious and the little girl on the ground, making the abstract and ugly win over the traditional.