Twilight Tales

'Twilight Tales' is an animated short depicting a child’s perception of the world during storytime, the bedtime story in the animation was mainly dictated by my young sister, Lily-May (aged 4 at the time), the child narrator heard in the piece. The endearing, unpredictable quality of how she describes her thoughts influenced the visual style of the piece.

The story follows a young girl on her journey through her bedtime story. As the narrator tries to tell a coherent linear story, the child interjects with her own ramblings adding on to the story as they travel through the magical universe of the tale. As her real physical world and the world she has created in her imagination interweave, the line between fantasy and reality increasingly blurs.

The bedroom story is a woven together narrative from a collection of recorded tales gathered from my sister over a period of a few weeks. The 2D animated characters created from Toonboom were composited in After Effects onto footage and shots from a 3 dimensional built set, showing the contrast of the physical world and imaginary one. My animation is in essence nostalgic, reconnecting the audience to their childhood memories and experiences.

My interest in the imagination has stemmed from experiencing a child’s view of the world once again through playing and spending time with Lily-May. My concept explores childhood imagination, its importance, and the magic and nostalgia people tend to have for that period in their lives. The animation further emphasises this connection by showing how real and vivid imagination feels for a child and recreating the magical atmosphere of storytelling.