Post-production
The final stage was post-production. This was done in After Effects. The adjustments and edits were all about giving the film the right vibe. As well as some visual effects, such as making the puppet disappear in mirrors. Then adding 2D animation in TVPaint, applying texture and putting it all together.
Here are some before and after pictures from the editing process.
Philosophy
This film is greatly inspired by existentialism and especially solipsism. Solipsism (from Latin solus 'alone', and ipse 'self') is the idea that only one's mind is sure to exist, that the experience of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds are just an illusion.
Hegel wrote in a passage in his book "Lectures on Aesthetics" that self awareness needs to be contemplated, then understood through outside experience. He uses an example where a boy tosses a rock into a pond and admires the rings in the water. The boy is in reality admiring the result of his own activity. He is interacting with the world that helps him become self aware. I believe a lot of artists feel the need to se others react to their artwork in order to feel that their work is real and making an impact. This is why I found this to be a great metaphor or symbol to add into my film. Outis can't make rings in the water or create.
Another book that greatly inspired this film is "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. Becker argues that the reason why we make art, write books, build buildings or religions, go to war or try to become famous is because we're afraid of dying. We're scared of being forgotten and become meaningless in an empty cruel universe. The fear of oblivion is what drives us to make our "immortality projects" as he calls it. This is Outis' goal in the film. She needs to write an immortality project, but she can't because she was never alive in the first place.
“He lives in a world of symboles and dreams and not merely matter. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea composed of sounds, words, and images, in the air in the mind, on paper.”
- Ernest Becker.
Outis' Desk
Four books of poetry collections as a hint to what she aspires to write.
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"The Denial of Death" by Ernest becker. A hint to the fact that she is trying to write an immortality project.
The hands of Lascaux
about 11000 years BC. people left their mark on the cave wall for all eternity.
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Little Nemo from Winsor McCay's cartoon. Nemo means "no one" in latin and thus is the equivalent to Outis.
(Winsor McCay is also one of the first animators)
Captain Nemo from Jules Verne's books Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1875)
Finally we have an excerpt from "The Odyssey" by Homer.
in this excerpt Odysseys tricks a Cyclops by saying that his name is "nobody" which in ancient greek is "Outis".
