The General Who Made Me Cry
Basically, title says it.
Cut for a few large images.
True account - I actually sat down on my parquet floor, laid my head against the side of my white chest of drawers, and cried that 15 minutes out
Whether it’s due to the deadline pressure or due to the emotional scene that unfolded in that few frames, I still wasn’t sure. But what I’m sure is, wherever I think back to that particular sequence inside my storyboard, it just stirred something inside me.
Talissa said maybe I’m emotionally attached to the character, and so when he died in the story, it just broke my heart.
Maybe that’s true, too.
Anyway, I’ve finished my storyboard, all 4 Acts of it, and all that’s left to do is draw neater outlines and colour Act 4. (due to the huge amount of frames in that Act 4, the lecturer let me colour just Act 4. I’m grateful.)
At the moment, I'm the only mad sod to churn out 28 pages for Act 4. I'm still waiting for someone else moar hardcore to break my record >D
----------------------------
The General who made me cry, is the character I created during Storyboard class.
You can see who influence his design most, but with enough changes, he becomes a unique one on his own - in fact, when I first started to come up with a sketch for the General character, his lines automatically flowed from my 8B pencil I was wielding at that time, and rough as it was, I liked the impression already, and when I finally sketch out his character studies, he becomes who he is today, as you see up here.
In actuality, the character (who goes by the name Mustapha, but I’m used to just calling him General) wasn’t named by me - it was inside the brief the Storyboard lecturers gave. And there’s two of them in this class.
The main lecturer goes by the name Liang Feng - for abbrev’s sake, I’ll call him Chocobo because he’s plump, friendly and a warm person - if you know FF8’s Chicobo, you’ll know what I mean ;D and the other lecturer is Kok Hwee, but because I always cannot remember his name, I always think of him as the Marine guy @ Mariner, since he’s built quite fit and sturdy and he always wear that dark teal shirt and matching cargo pants.
So yeap, Chocobo and the Mariner is my Storyboard lecturers for this term :D
Now, Chocobo, is a really nice guy. HONEST. He’s like, one of the NICEST IL lecturer I’ve met after these 2 years. Or maybe because last sem has some shitty lecturers (y’know who I’m talking about) as well as some lecturers with a mean streak (read: the Lions, the Walking Horror) and the resulting negativity had me appreciating any lecturers who treat me better this term.
Mariner is okay, he’s a man of a few words, but when he does speak something, it’s always meaningful - in fact, he’s the first to acknowledge my skills in Storyboard.
Or more like, he’s the first to literally announce in class that
I’m the first, among all the other students, including the seniors,
to do something differently for storyboard
- by reusing a character from the first Act and, and most of all,
to utilize emotions in a storyboard.
The fact that he’d said it so clear and with affirmation, shocked me.
It’s true. By the time he said it, I was looking at him with wide, stunned eyes.
Like, are you pulling my leg or what? Me, good at storyboard?
When I’m quite useless in mostly everything else?
After all, this is the ME who gets machine-gunned all the time from Leo and KS, and I struggled with advertising visuals (both the basic and advanced classes). Furthermore, I wasn’t so confident in the story-telling department - in fact, in the beginning of term, Storyboard class scared me.
But after the way Mariner said he liked my work best, and he liked my story, and the fact that
I showed my characters with emotions, and use the camera movement/transitions well,
somehow, it made me want to work even more, to show not just him, but to Chocobo that I can do better.
That time, I wasn’t sure if my works were good enough for Chocobo (since the first few classes, we actually rarely talked, and most of the time I see him helping other students instead), so I tried harder.
But turns out, Chocobo found me (apparently) quite well-versed in storyboard (when I have like, zero knowledge on storyboarding from the start, until I attended his class), and he finally told me what he thinks of me during the crit sessions, which stunned me even more than the Mariner’s revelation (more on that later).
Before I talk on that, I’ll briefly explain the 4 acts inside the main storyboard I’m working on for this term:
Act 1 It started with the establishing shot of Planet Vertex, and the subsequent intro of the crew on that planet, then crossfade to the HQ on Planet Earth (where the General had first made his appearance here) before ending with the mothership embarking on its return through hyperspace.
Act 2 It opened with a classy spacegirl reporting the mothership re-entry live (think the videogame Space Channel 5 and that’s her), and the sequence where the General was mysteriously whisked away by his team. (it was this part that I watched the Mariner kept flipping back and forth the uploaded pages on the server, coz I think he thought I had deviated too far from the brief - which he later on said, after reading the whole act, he finally understood why I told the story that way, and that he actually liked the way I embedded the mystery).
And before we know it, the mothership had crashed through KLCC, and the capital burned in its wake, rendering the General very very distressed indeed when he saw the last moments of the telecast (Mariner enjoyed this act for its sense of emotions, Chocobo loved my carnage scene due to the camera angle and the severity of the scene).
Act 3 The General flew back to the crash site aboard his airship, with the full might of his military rescue forces --- and at the same time, the retrieval team was sent in to retrieve the black box but encountered a nasty alien, and before they made it back to base, the black box’s deactivation sequence literally blew up the whole team (yes, I’m a sadist) and the last transmission to the General, is a scene of shock and carnage as the aliens started their slaughterfest.
Act 4 Since it was so huge, I broke it to a further 3 more acts, so my Act 4 now is about the war that the General and co. waged on the aliens - but it’s a never-ending war, and eventually it took a huge toll on the General and the Lieutenant General had to call for a retreat.
Act 5 The in-betweens (since it’s within just 3 pages / 15 frames) - The General was out cold in a ward somewhere, so the Lieutenant-General planned to save the day with her “Special Forces” that were made up of highly-skilled mercenaries from Russia, England and Japan. When the General finally recovered, it was to get the resident weaponsmith to craft him stronger weapons, including the ultimate prototype [Jibril].
Act 6 > The Climax Arc --- with the Special Forces almost wiped out, the General swooped in in time to save the last remaining members, and sent them away to safety aboard the shuttle he just came on with. The General’s forces (now armed with better anti-alien armaments) managed to whittle down the alien horde’s numbers, but the tables got turned on them when the aliens got smarter, and merged together to form one mother-f*** of a giant alien and subsequently grabbed all but the General and consumed them (y’know how octopuses/squids ate their prey? Yup like that.)
In a fit of rage/final conviction, the General overrode the [Jibril]’s controls and finally took down the giant alien - but not without sacrificing himself in the process (yes, the part that made me cry.)
Act 7 / Ending In 4 pages, I showed the life of the Lieutenant General after the invasion/fallout, where she waited for the General to be back (they managed to salvage whatever they can find of him, and he was in stasis for 2 years now) and after she woke up, she saw a message, that eventually brought about her reunion with the someone whom she’d waited for 2 years to come back. (yeap, I brought him back, because I can’t stand him being dead + I don’t want to the Lieutenant-General to cry, too.)
And that’s basically my full storyboard for “The Final Invasion” project.
Kinda epic, no?
And if it weren’t for the time limit, I think I woulda write an even longer epic story that woulda involve how they lost the war.
But I'll just keep those as sketches inside my sketchbook. (Yup, I've gotten down the part where how the General's air forces were smartly wiped out by the aliens, haven't started on the rest yet).
When I first showed Chocobo the full storyboard (he told us to compile in a clear folder), halfway through Act 4, he asked me, “Ey, you like animation is it?”
“Ehh…why leh?”
“You write until so long!” And we laughed. I said I couldn’t stop myself (which is true, coz once I get into the storyboard, I just keep drawing, drawing, drawing…)
At the end of Act 4, I can see Chocobo smiling,
and he turned to me and just said,
“I like your story.”
At that I clapped and whooped with joy. My expression was literally like this: XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Then comes the serious business, where I had to start considering the layers (coz we’re gonna hit the animatics next term, and we’re gonna animate our storyboard!!!), and after streamlining the story (coz I went beyond 250 frames, I had to cut and focus on the main act @ Act 4-6), I’ll have to start on the b/w before going full colour (just for the Act 4-6).
During that crit session, some weird convo cropped up.
One of it, was Chocobo telling me that I’m the best in (his) class.
I flatly told him NO, coz the best in class is Wei Yang!!! But he was not convinced, as he said he can see for himself the amount of work and detail and effort, and no one else comes close.
Then he added, that whether it’s because I’m a DD (he doesn’t know I have a degree, but I ain’t telling him until the last day, like for all the other lecturers heheheheheheh I’M SAVING IT TO WATCH THE PRICELESS EXPRESSION UNTIL THE LAST CLASS WUAHAHAHAHA >DDD) or that because I’m somehow different from the others, that I get to churned out better stuff than the others (whut?), and that he finds it a joy to teach people like me.
Not only that, he later said, “From your work, I totally understand how your mind works.
You and I, we are the same people.” And with a straight face too, nodding his head in affirmation.
Obviously, I got weirded out by that last statement, coz personally, I find it borderline creepy.
Him? Understand how my mind works? I am the same as him? Whut?? WHAT??? OwO;;; But, HOW???
I told this to Talissa, and she just said, “I think he means well. Just take it as a compliment I guess? ^^; ”
Then, he suggested something fun for me to do, besides the storyboard:
"Hey, since your (General) character is already there, why don't you use it for Concept Art class?"
I looked at him, shook my head in horror and said, "OH NOOO KIN SUN WILL KILL MEEEE---He'll think I'm lazy for recycling my characters from Storyboard in his class instead of coming up with a new one!~~~"
"Then you tell him la, 'Heeeey this character got storyboard wan you know!' Haha...I don't think he'll mind la, why not do it."
I pondered on this tempting invitation for awhile.
And finally decided.
"Yeah...I guess I could. And I don't think Kin Sun's that free to go check where this character come from anyway >D S'okay, I'll use the General and co. for his class. Besides, I've got all his weaponry and stats down already. It'll be a waste if I can't utilize them."
THIS IS LIKE, KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE WOOOHOOOOOOOO
And the two of us shared what I called a mutual evil grin smile of agreement.
OYES, after the Exchange Concept Art part, I'm gonna part-ay with the General for the character design part next >DDDD
Anyway, weird statements aside, Chocobo is still a nice guy with a good sense of humour, so due to the amount of work I’d generated + epic story, he showed me some awesome animatics, and then he told me, along with the rest of Group 1 that he saw that day, can take a day off class next week to work on our storyboards.
I was like, WOW, permission to holiday? JOB ACCEPTED!!! XDDDDD
Not only that, the week after is Exploration Week, so it’s like…he just gave us an early Christmas present or something 8DDDD
But come to think of it, during last week’s class, since only Group 1 turned up and we ought to have about 12 of us and only 5 of us showed up, he was quite…relaxed? Forgiving? Wants to indulge us 5 hardworking students for coming to class when all others died somewhere else?
At any rate, Chocobo and Mariner, they’re one of the few lecturers whom I’ve met who knows how to inspire us students. And so I’m determined more than ever to do the best I can for this class --- in order to have MOAR FUN in next term’s Storyboard 2 >DDD
-------------
Storyboard aside, I was hardcore enough to cough up an origins story for the General and his Lieutenant-General. It’s not going into the final storyboard, so I’m posting here as a one-shot instead.
At this stage, his Lieutenant-General has just flew over from Russia, where the General had requested her to fill the vacant post in his crew. Yeap, I made her Russian, and her name (tentative, but most prolly will stick with it) is Katya (short from Katrina), and she fleshed out (about the same rate with the General) to be one helluva kicka$$ lady who takes no orders from anyone else, is very loyal to her comrades, and does her job with ruthless efficiency --- and she wields a big-ass plasma cannon (think of Seras's Halconnen cross with BRS's Black Cannon. It's that epic, and SHE'S that epic XD;;)
From this point in time though, his Lieutenant-General did most of his work anyway |D;;; Including saving him time and again, motivating him when he’s down, etc. She’s the kinda woman who stands behind every great man (yeap, she's just like that saying...)
And naturally, when he sacrificed himself after he put her on the last shuttle out of the crash site, she was devastated.
There *is* another ending, the one after the original ending inside the current storyboard, but I’ll post it once this term is over. It’ll be a more fitting end for both of them, at least. And I'm saving it towards the last class >D
-----------------
For now, time for that overdue massive uploads for Concept Art!
-L
Cut for a few large images.
True account - I actually sat down on my parquet floor, laid my head against the side of my white chest of drawers, and cried that 15 minutes out
Whether it’s due to the deadline pressure or due to the emotional scene that unfolded in that few frames, I still wasn’t sure. But what I’m sure is, wherever I think back to that particular sequence inside my storyboard, it just stirred something inside me.
Talissa said maybe I’m emotionally attached to the character, and so when he died in the story, it just broke my heart.
Maybe that’s true, too.
Anyway, I’ve finished my storyboard, all 4 Acts of it, and all that’s left to do is draw neater outlines and colour Act 4. (due to the huge amount of frames in that Act 4, the lecturer let me colour just Act 4. I’m grateful.)
At the moment, I'm the only mad sod to churn out 28 pages for Act 4. I'm still waiting for someone else moar hardcore to break my record >D
----------------------------
The General who made me cry, is the character I created during Storyboard class.
You can see who influence his design most, but with enough changes, he becomes a unique one on his own - in fact, when I first started to come up with a sketch for the General character, his lines automatically flowed from my 8B pencil I was wielding at that time, and rough as it was, I liked the impression already, and when I finally sketch out his character studies, he becomes who he is today, as you see up here.
In actuality, the character (who goes by the name Mustapha, but I’m used to just calling him General) wasn’t named by me - it was inside the brief the Storyboard lecturers gave. And there’s two of them in this class.
The main lecturer goes by the name Liang Feng - for abbrev’s sake, I’ll call him Chocobo because he’s plump, friendly and a warm person - if you know FF8’s Chicobo, you’ll know what I mean ;D and the other lecturer is Kok Hwee, but because I always cannot remember his name, I always think of him as the Marine guy @ Mariner, since he’s built quite fit and sturdy and he always wear that dark teal shirt and matching cargo pants.
So yeap, Chocobo and the Mariner is my Storyboard lecturers for this term :D
Now, Chocobo, is a really nice guy. HONEST. He’s like, one of the NICEST IL lecturer I’ve met after these 2 years. Or maybe because last sem has some shitty lecturers (y’know who I’m talking about) as well as some lecturers with a mean streak (read: the Lions, the Walking Horror) and the resulting negativity had me appreciating any lecturers who treat me better this term.
Mariner is okay, he’s a man of a few words, but when he does speak something, it’s always meaningful - in fact, he’s the first to acknowledge my skills in Storyboard.
Or more like, he’s the first to literally announce in class that
I’m the first, among all the other students, including the seniors,
to do something differently for storyboard
- by reusing a character from the first Act and, and most of all,
to utilize emotions in a storyboard.
The fact that he’d said it so clear and with affirmation, shocked me.
It’s true. By the time he said it, I was looking at him with wide, stunned eyes.
Like, are you pulling my leg or what? Me, good at storyboard?
When I’m quite useless in mostly everything else?
After all, this is the ME who gets machine-gunned all the time from Leo and KS, and I struggled with advertising visuals (both the basic and advanced classes). Furthermore, I wasn’t so confident in the story-telling department - in fact, in the beginning of term, Storyboard class scared me.
But after the way Mariner said he liked my work best, and he liked my story, and the fact that
I showed my characters with emotions, and use the camera movement/transitions well,
somehow, it made me want to work even more, to show not just him, but to Chocobo that I can do better.
That time, I wasn’t sure if my works were good enough for Chocobo (since the first few classes, we actually rarely talked, and most of the time I see him helping other students instead), so I tried harder.
But turns out, Chocobo found me (apparently) quite well-versed in storyboard (when I have like, zero knowledge on storyboarding from the start, until I attended his class), and he finally told me what he thinks of me during the crit sessions, which stunned me even more than the Mariner’s revelation (more on that later).
Before I talk on that, I’ll briefly explain the 4 acts inside the main storyboard I’m working on for this term:
Act 1 It started with the establishing shot of Planet Vertex, and the subsequent intro of the crew on that planet, then crossfade to the HQ on Planet Earth (where the General had first made his appearance here) before ending with the mothership embarking on its return through hyperspace.
Act 2 It opened with a classy spacegirl reporting the mothership re-entry live (think the videogame Space Channel 5 and that’s her), and the sequence where the General was mysteriously whisked away by his team. (it was this part that I watched the Mariner kept flipping back and forth the uploaded pages on the server, coz I think he thought I had deviated too far from the brief - which he later on said, after reading the whole act, he finally understood why I told the story that way, and that he actually liked the way I embedded the mystery).
And before we know it, the mothership had crashed through KLCC, and the capital burned in its wake, rendering the General very very distressed indeed when he saw the last moments of the telecast (Mariner enjoyed this act for its sense of emotions, Chocobo loved my carnage scene due to the camera angle and the severity of the scene).
Act 3 The General flew back to the crash site aboard his airship, with the full might of his military rescue forces --- and at the same time, the retrieval team was sent in to retrieve the black box but encountered a nasty alien, and before they made it back to base, the black box’s deactivation sequence literally blew up the whole team (yes, I’m a sadist) and the last transmission to the General, is a scene of shock and carnage as the aliens started their slaughterfest.
Act 4 Since it was so huge, I broke it to a further 3 more acts, so my Act 4 now is about the war that the General and co. waged on the aliens - but it’s a never-ending war, and eventually it took a huge toll on the General and the Lieutenant General had to call for a retreat.
Act 5 The in-betweens (since it’s within just 3 pages / 15 frames) - The General was out cold in a ward somewhere, so the Lieutenant-General planned to save the day with her “Special Forces” that were made up of highly-skilled mercenaries from Russia, England and Japan. When the General finally recovered, it was to get the resident weaponsmith to craft him stronger weapons, including the ultimate prototype [Jibril].
Act 6 > The Climax Arc --- with the Special Forces almost wiped out, the General swooped in in time to save the last remaining members, and sent them away to safety aboard the shuttle he just came on with. The General’s forces (now armed with better anti-alien armaments) managed to whittle down the alien horde’s numbers, but the tables got turned on them when the aliens got smarter, and merged together to form one mother-f*** of a giant alien and subsequently grabbed all but the General and consumed them (y’know how octopuses/squids ate their prey? Yup like that.)
In a fit of rage/final conviction, the General overrode the [Jibril]’s controls and finally took down the giant alien - but not without sacrificing himself in the process (yes, the part that made me cry.)
Act 7 / Ending In 4 pages, I showed the life of the Lieutenant General after the invasion/fallout, where she waited for the General to be back (they managed to salvage whatever they can find of him, and he was in stasis for 2 years now) and after she woke up, she saw a message, that eventually brought about her reunion with the someone whom she’d waited for 2 years to come back. (yeap, I brought him back, because I can’t stand him being dead + I don’t want to the Lieutenant-General to cry, too.)
And that’s basically my full storyboard for “The Final Invasion” project.
Kinda epic, no?
And if it weren’t for the time limit, I think I woulda write an even longer epic story that woulda involve how they lost the war.
But I'll just keep those as sketches inside my sketchbook. (Yup, I've gotten down the part where how the General's air forces were smartly wiped out by the aliens, haven't started on the rest yet).
When I first showed Chocobo the full storyboard (he told us to compile in a clear folder), halfway through Act 4, he asked me, “Ey, you like animation is it?”
“Ehh…why leh?”
“You write until so long!” And we laughed. I said I couldn’t stop myself (which is true, coz once I get into the storyboard, I just keep drawing, drawing, drawing…)
At the end of Act 4, I can see Chocobo smiling,
and he turned to me and just said,
“I like your story.”
At that I clapped and whooped with joy. My expression was literally like this: XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Then comes the serious business, where I had to start considering the layers (coz we’re gonna hit the animatics next term, and we’re gonna animate our storyboard!!!), and after streamlining the story (coz I went beyond 250 frames, I had to cut and focus on the main act @ Act 4-6), I’ll have to start on the b/w before going full colour (just for the Act 4-6).
During that crit session, some weird convo cropped up.
One of it, was Chocobo telling me that I’m the best in (his) class.
I flatly told him NO, coz the best in class is Wei Yang!!! But he was not convinced, as he said he can see for himself the amount of work and detail and effort, and no one else comes close.
Then he added, that whether it’s because I’m a DD (he doesn’t know I have a degree, but I ain’t telling him until the last day, like for all the other lecturers heheheheheheh I’M SAVING IT TO WATCH THE PRICELESS EXPRESSION UNTIL THE LAST CLASS WUAHAHAHAHA >DDD) or that because I’m somehow different from the others, that I get to churned out better stuff than the others (whut?), and that he finds it a joy to teach people like me.
Not only that, he later said, “From your work, I totally understand how your mind works.
You and I, we are the same people.” And with a straight face too, nodding his head in affirmation.
Obviously, I got weirded out by that last statement, coz personally, I find it borderline creepy.
Him? Understand how my mind works? I am the same as him? Whut?? WHAT??? OwO;;; But, HOW???
I told this to Talissa, and she just said, “I think he means well. Just take it as a compliment I guess? ^^; ”
Then, he suggested something fun for me to do, besides the storyboard:
"Hey, since your (General) character is already there, why don't you use it for Concept Art class?"
I looked at him, shook my head in horror and said, "OH NOOO KIN SUN WILL KILL MEEEE---He'll think I'm lazy for recycling my characters from Storyboard in his class instead of coming up with a new one!~~~"
"Then you tell him la, 'Heeeey this character got storyboard wan you know!' Haha...I don't think he'll mind la, why not do it."
I pondered on this tempting invitation for awhile.
And finally decided.
"Yeah...I guess I could. And I don't think Kin Sun's that free to go check where this character come from anyway >D S'okay, I'll use the General and co. for his class. Besides, I've got all his weaponry and stats down already. It'll be a waste if I can't utilize them."
THIS IS LIKE, KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE WOOOHOOOOOOOO
And the two of us shared what I called a mutual evil grin smile of agreement.
OYES, after the Exchange Concept Art part, I'm gonna part-ay with the General for the character design part next >DDDD
Anyway, weird statements aside, Chocobo is still a nice guy with a good sense of humour, so due to the amount of work I’d generated + epic story, he showed me some awesome animatics, and then he told me, along with the rest of Group 1 that he saw that day, can take a day off class next week to work on our storyboards.
I was like, WOW, permission to holiday? JOB ACCEPTED!!! XDDDDD
Not only that, the week after is Exploration Week, so it’s like…he just gave us an early Christmas present or something 8DDDD
But come to think of it, during last week’s class, since only Group 1 turned up and we ought to have about 12 of us and only 5 of us showed up, he was quite…relaxed? Forgiving? Wants to indulge us 5 hardworking students for coming to class when all others died somewhere else?
At any rate, Chocobo and Mariner, they’re one of the few lecturers whom I’ve met who knows how to inspire us students. And so I’m determined more than ever to do the best I can for this class --- in order to have MOAR FUN in next term’s Storyboard 2 >DDD
-------------
Storyboard aside, I was hardcore enough to cough up an origins story for the General and his Lieutenant-General. It’s not going into the final storyboard, so I’m posting here as a one-shot instead.
At this stage, his Lieutenant-General has just flew over from Russia, where the General had requested her to fill the vacant post in his crew. Yeap, I made her Russian, and her name (tentative, but most prolly will stick with it) is Katya (short from Katrina), and she fleshed out (about the same rate with the General) to be one helluva kicka$$ lady who takes no orders from anyone else, is very loyal to her comrades, and does her job with ruthless efficiency --- and she wields a big-ass plasma cannon (think of Seras's Halconnen cross with BRS's Black Cannon. It's that epic, and SHE'S that epic XD;;)
From this point in time though, his Lieutenant-General did most of his work anyway |D;;; Including saving him time and again, motivating him when he’s down, etc. She’s the kinda woman who stands behind every great man (yeap, she's just like that saying...)
And naturally, when he sacrificed himself after he put her on the last shuttle out of the crash site, she was devastated.
There *is* another ending, the one after the original ending inside the current storyboard, but I’ll post it once this term is over. It’ll be a more fitting end for both of them, at least. And I'm saving it towards the last class >D
-----------------
For now, time for that overdue massive uploads for Concept Art!
-L