Storyline
This week I have been revising and finalising an outline for the story. Combining the theories from last week’s research, I came up with the story of “Happy Excursion”: Many, many years ago, when Zhuang Zhou was drunk, he dreamed that he was a butterfly flying in a sea of sand. He saw a Peng, a giant bird in ancient Chinese legends flying in the sky, and then he kept flying ahead. He saw a hut in the distance that looked like his own house. He went up to it and saw that it was his own drunken Self. Suddenly he turned into a Kun and swam in the sea of sand. When he dived, he found that he had come to a big forest. Then he slowly swam through the forest. He discovered his hut in the woods again, and he was still drunk. So he swam upstream and burst out of the sea, only to find an iceberg several times his size. At that moment, Zhuang Zhou woke up from his dream. In short of saying Zhuang Zhou was drunk and dreamt that he was swimming in the world of the id, the Ego and the Superego as different creatures.
Story outline
Reference
Technique Challenge
For this film I planned to use a completely new process: Maya combined with Unreal Engine 4. Nowadays Unreal Engine 4 is very powerful and can produce very good graphics and very fast rendering. So I decided to use Maya to create various assets and then import them into Unreal Engine 4 for integration. This is a great way to increase productivity. But Unreal Engine 4 is new to me, so it will take me some time to learn it. Also, the import of Maya assets into Unreal Engine 4 is a key issue.
The film will also involve some special effects, such as sand effects, so I may also use Houdini to create some particle effects. This will be a bit of a challenge for me too.