The Best Things in Life are Free.

I don't really feel secure about writing down here and explaining the whole story plot since the animation is still in the making and the blogspot can be easily accessed by anyone but despite that I can try vaguely say what I want to show in my animation...

The story is about the shadow fed up with the behavior of his owner to the point that decided to punish him by stealing a ''day'' from his life. The main character John is turned into the ''shadow's shadow'' and watch his own frolic around and enjoy what he undervalued for so long. Be it simple pleasures like feeding doves or love of a certain woman.

Some people find this story funny and some find it dark but what I really wish people could see in it are the little morals and meanings I placed here and there.
It always pained me to see people this days looking for and pleased only with the ''very best'' products and lives while they can find those things [and have them just as good] right next to themselves. They just rarely notice them. Why some people go to the fancy restaurants and pay hundreds of dollars for the bowl of the ice creams while they can have one just as good in the cafe around the corner? Why someone crave for the love from the famous people while somebody else who lives on the same street might love this person just as much if not more? The best things in life don't have the price tag on.

Maybe it wasn't only the anger behind the shadow's actions? Maybe he tried to help his owner realise the value of the simple pleasures of life by triggering in him jealousy? I sometimes feel like the shadow is the most developed character from all in the story, despite him being, well...''just a shadow''.

Talking about shadow, there is a lot in the beginning of the poem about spitting on him, but I wouldn't take it literally. It's more about hurting [even if not intentionally] and ignoring the closest people. Those which stay by someone else's side even when everyone else already turned the back on this person. At some point in John's case it could look like as if he was so despicable that even his shadow didn't wanted to spend with him time...but as I said earlier there was a different reason behind his actions.



[I like this photo by forgotenx. It reminds me of my animation.]

The lost memories.

The idea for my animation appeared in my head so suddenly and it was so clear that it felt as if it always was there. Like if it wasn't anything new after all but only one of the many long lost memories in my unconciousness and this one just ''reminded'' me about itself. It is a bit strange how ideas are born inside my head. I usually don't really need to think of the story. Sometimes I wish that I had to, so people could see the slow and developing process...but in my case its a bit strange. I was sitting in the boring room next to the vending machine, while suddenly, out of the blue I got a rhyming poem inside my head. The lines appeared one after another and while they did I quickly took out a piece of paper to write them down. The english was akward and what rhymed inside my head did not when prenouced out loud but it didn't really mattered to me much at that time. I got an idea for the final year movie and I promised myself to work on it once [and if] I will manage to be on the 4th year.

It's been 2 years since I wrote on that scrap of the paper the lousy script-poem of mine and I had since then a lot of other ''epiphanies'' and stories with different characters, developed deeply enought that I could turn them into final year animation. Yet I am stubborn and I will animate the one with the shadow. I feel some sort of sentiment toward this story. Maybe because that as a very small child I felt and thought that my shadow have life on it's own and it just pretends that it does not. There, a small tribute to my childhood's credulity.

...so the story was born suddenly but how were born the characters? Pretty much the same, tho 2 years ago, when I designed them, I drawn my characters a bit worst than I do now. As the time passed I improved in drawing and they look like now a bit more human-like even if they still remained as animals. I always liked the idea of them acting like a people. The Aesop's Fables and polish poems showing human's bad and good sides throught the animal symbolism were things which influanced me during childhood. Not much of the symbolism is putted into the story itself but the choice of the species my characters are is not random. I wanted to make Mary Doyle a fox. There is something feminine about this animal. I find it easy to change it into a ''girl''. The red hair could represent the fox's fur and the long black gloves it's paws. John Smitty [who's name was supposed to be Lemoine but was changed since could be mistaken with Lemony Snicket] is on the other hand a hybrid between the red panda and the cat. There is a polish saying that ''Cat's walk their very own paths'' so maybe that's why John's shadow wanted to finally find his own...?