The Brief

Nicholas Grassi

An animated film about all of humanity on the back of a giant, who walks on clouds despite his enormous weight. The compact space causes social clash. The film hopes to provoke young people to not only THINK about modern conflicts, but to take action.
Our animation is about the arcs of civilization. The giant never stops walking (even while he sleeps), symbolizing the continuity of their
civilization. In our world there are two social classes: the miners and the wealthy. The lower class (the miners) gather gems and ore from the giant's body to sell to the upper class.
Predominantly, the lower class inhabits the buildings farther down the giant's back (and vice versa) because they feel the giant's walking the most; it makes buildings shake, causing the value of the buildings to drop.
Yet, social classes gather in the marketplace: a piece of land in between the residential areas, mid way up the giant's back dedicated to trade. It is packed, crowded, and sweaty, causing tension in the air. While one miner, a young boy, mines away behind a stall, a wealthy man shows off a coin. The kid immediately begs for the coin, and the man throws the coin off of the giant. The kid is shocked; that shock turns to rage as he throws a rock at the wealthy man. Everyone in the marketplace is shocked on both sides. This turns to a larger scale conflict.  At one point, the marketplace tents are lit on fire, causing chaos all over the city. The surrounding buildings collapse into the giant, who then falls down. This represents the collapse of civilization. Hours later, there is nothing left of the city. Survivors on both sides decide to work in harmony to rebuild their home: something they both need. They, together, build a new city, and the giant opens his eyes.
We chose to make the first city steampunk-like because we could play with interesting movements when the buildings collapse; some buildings are made of accordions so they can condense very neatly. Additionally, metal is the only resource these people have. Meanwhile, the city the people build at the end of the film is made of stone, looking much more natural. The steampunk's evolution into stone could represent the change in the society's enviornmentalism.
Social class conflict is an example of a modern conflict: it connects to divided communities/peoples; similar to the Syrian War.
Our style uses lots of sillouettes and shadows to force the viewer's eye to focus on the action in each scene. To personalize our marks, we used Photoshop to draw the scenes because we could create our own brushes. We then used After Effects to move the objects around on screen by scale, position, rotat‭ion, and more. The program even allowed us to move our two dimensional objects in the third dimension, allowing us to distort images, making shots with hands' many moving parts easy.
We hope people enjoy our film and it stays with them for a long time.