Rotoscopes: Small stories, small futures

 

Note: If the animation doesn’t start right away, left-click on the image area above.

Something I dubbed “Cicatrix” was evoked at the end of the rotoscope. This was a short story that I started writing in grade 10 about the speculative near future, where there were tribal groups vying to advance technology for their own clan. This triggered a genetic mutation that killed off 10% of the population and caused an increase in stillbirths. This decimation is the “IX” in “Cicatrix”. The tribal societies became increasingly xenophobic and reverted back to a feudalistic structure to suppress the population from forms of revolt. The story of Cicatrix is told through the eyes of a girl who dared to travel to document the strange dreams that have been developing over the surviving citizen population, and comes to learn how this uncovers the mystery of those who died.

Because I wrote this a while ago, I would say that it is aimed at a YA audience. Perhaps I’ll refine the story one day. The email address mentioned at the end doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s nice to know that I was thinking of how I could pitch the project, even then. The animated character was based off of a video of my acting.

Click here to see a test rotoscope that I did for practice, before embarking on this particular project. All of these were hand-drawn in Flash.