The Boy Who Draws Cats: 3D Animation As a Medium For Telling Culturally-specific Ghost Stories
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: People have always taken great interests in supernatural subjects.Animated films that subjected in ghost and supernatural themes has also increased in recent years.As an animation scholar, my interest is to study why the topic of ghosts has had such enduring charm over the centuries, and wish to make an animation subjected in Eastern ghost story that resonate with the Western viewers.The first part of this paper will examine the most important features that are needed to know about ghost stories in Eastern and Western culture, including the similarities and distinctions.The second part of this paper connects the theory and the project.Inspired by Lafcadio Hearn's ghost story collection, The Boy Who Draws Cats presents the important substantive qualities and perspectives found in traditional Eastern ghost stories.The process of making the project includes concept development, story design and scene-by-scene design of The Boy Who Draws Cats.In this part, two important visual storytelling tools "backstory" and "mise-en-scene" has been analyzed to communicated characteristics in a culturally accessible way that makes it easy for Western viewers to understand and accept the alternative values that are commonly presented in an Eastern ghost story.
Author: Shumeng Zhao
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Topic: Digital Media and Visual Art
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2607422171