BACKGROUND —

Journey to the West is a Chinese television series, featuring six celebrities who go on exotic missions. It is one of the most watched shows in China. PlusOne was tasked with creating a show-opener in a cut-out, print, collage style, that will appeal to a younger audience.

The storyboard begins with each celebrity being introduced one-by-one. Then, a tiger appears, and swallows them. Next, the celebrities fall down a tunnel from heaven to earth. A fist smashes the tunnel open, and golden coins fly out. The coins refract and reflect through glass. When this shot pans out, the glass is revealed to be the Wishing Machine. Got it?

STYLEFRAMES —

I used Photoshop to create style frames for the opening section, where each celebrity is introduced.

ANIMATION —

I animated the opening sections. The style required a low frame rate, rotoscoped footage, a bitmap plugin, and a number of toggle hold keyframes. An early draft of my animation of the celebrity, Gengxin Lin, is shown below.