Analysis of Redesigned Animatic

In this post I would clearly like to add some analysis as to what and why certain things are occurring in the animatic.

Factual Story:
peasant eunuch boy made admiral by friend- the young emperor.
admiral is sent on a mission by emperor to search/discover and trade.
Disagreements grew amongst the two sets of people in the royal courts: the Eunuchs and Confucians (conflicts due to Zheng He's rise in power)
Friend/emperor dies
The Confucians came to power, eventually dismantling the vast fleet.

Our Version
Letter from emperor to Admiral wishing luck on his journey. We see the boat in glorious times, sailing the sea and we can even envision the emperor through his statue.
However we gradually transition to a stage where it seems that the ship is sailing in to a storm.
When we move into the boat- we have great contrast in feel- every thing is empty/decaying.
We find out that the emperor is dead and that is why the ship has no purpose. Ironically it is the statue that we see in the beginning that turns out to be a shrine.
We see the ship crashing under waves as if it were in the middle of its toughest journey- symbolically representing the fall of the Junk ship. Eventually we find all of the candles blowing out to show the end of its journey.

Some of the most interesting points to me are the following:

FRAME OF TIME
The story starts in the past when things are hopeful looking toward the future.
When we enter the ship, it is motionless, beached and empty. This would be the Future state of the ship.
Through our path in the beached ship we discover why this has occurred and then picture what events had caused such damage.

As a story, we start in the past, move to the future and then show clips of the middle. Having this non linear time travel through out the same setting itself is a very interesting idea. We also did our best to couple certain time periods with certain moods:

Past: Positive, Hopeful, Magnificence, Decadent
Future: Erie, Strange, Dark, Quiet, Unsettling
Present: Shocking, Scary, Emotional, Intense

ADDED METAPHORS
Blowing Candles- show the once steady candles quivering in anticipation
Crumbling Statue/Fluttering Flag/Crashing wave- The literal fall of this Era through turmoil
Falling Ink Pot- the ink that was filling out the map, would fall and erase all that was built- also symbolic of how he was covered up/deleted from Chinese History
Falling Dagger- Symbolizes the magnificence of these voyages (in its design) yet it rises and falls directly on to the map as if to halt the voyage- metaphoric of that which rises must eventually fall in spite of its magnificence- a slight play on destiny.

Given the constraints presented initially I do feel that our group have a very good project to work with. Now our project has a wide number of features that add to it- We had adopted the style of Alex Roman, we have an interesting environment, a very interesting story in a non linear time frame, and we have certain elements that tell a factual story. So far I am very pleased with the progress my group has made and hope to now use this animatic as the basis of our final product.