Kappa & Onmyoji

The story revolves around a Kappa whose fate lies in the hands of an Onmyoji after trying to steal his golden ball.

Screened at Melbourne International Film Festival and Young Animators Film Festival, 2018

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Concept art for Kappa & Onmyoji. This is the first short film I did by myself and it is only a minute long. It was quite an exciting experience as I got to design everything myself. 

Old design for Kappa. Since yokai lore states that Kappas love sumo wrestling, I gave him a loin cloth.

Initial design for Sev the Onmyoji. He's named after Severus Snape because he looks kinda like him.

Since the film is supposed to be done solo, I simplified the character designs so it will be much faster and easier to draw. I chose that style to fit with the paper theme I had going.

 I chose the more desaturated version of the typical Kappa colours to give it the feeling of an older era.

 I chose white as his main colour to show his purity with shades of blue and green to represent his more calm and serious nature.

The pages that appeared in the film. You can read them more clearly now! Of course the graphic description and image meant I was instantly disqualified every time I try to enter it to a film festival for children....

 First storyboard draft with the old character designs. I was too ambitious and wanted a full fight scene, which definitely cannot fit in one minute.

The subsequent storyboard with a simplified fight scene that somehow ended up becoming longer than the previous. It actually looks quite fun to animate now that I look back at it.

This next storyboard has the condensed fight but a longer opening to establish the importance of water for the Kappa. It still ended up being too long but the overall beats of the story are there.

The finalised storyboard that gets rid of the long introduction and has a short fight scene. It conveys the main message in a short and simple way as well.