"An act of kindness and connection in a dystopia of isolation"
"Act Together" was a competition brief commissioned by the Royal Society for Arts (RSA) in 2021-2022. We were given an audio track and were tasked to provided visuals to accompany it. The audio provided was a narration given by Dr. Vivek Murthy, as he speaks about how our divided world is filled with systemic inequalities, and we must work to fix relations amongst ourselves.
2022 IDI Graduate Design Awards Winner
I've always been interested in the old Hitchcock movies that play with themes of voyeurism, and I wanted to implement similar ideas in to this piece. This idea required a passive character, who would allow us to peer into the lives of the world's inhabitants, and towards the end of the story, would take a much more proactive role as the narration implores for it.
I ended up deciding on a window cleaner, acting as the audience’s viewpoint, as they descend a building filled with isolated people shut off from the immediate world around them.
The ending had the cleaner meeting a homeless character, and in no longer wanting to be a bystander, they take the homeless character for a meal, inciting an awareness and engagement with the issues that surround them.
Style Frame showing the "Voyeurism" concept
The alien/elf designs for the characters were chosen as they were human enough to feel familiar, relatable, and to allow for empathetic projection, but alien enough that the distance allows the viewer to not feel as if they are personally being blamed for the problems showcased in the animation. As a result, they would hopefully be more receptive to the portrayed messages, and in turn may recognise similar issues in their own lives and act to solve them.
Initial Character Designs
The project utilises a specific list of colours. They were inspired by the work of comic-book and graphic-novel colourist John Higgins. His colours vary panel to panel and are chosen not to be realistic, but to match the emotion and tone of the given frame or panel. Combined with the comic book medium’s grander use of black ink, it truly pushes that dystopian/sci-fi noir aesthetic that the project was looking for.
Colours used
