The aim for this project was to create a trailer for the book Scar Island, by Dan Gemeinhart. The book tells a story of a teenager who gets sent to Slabhenge, a place where misbehaved kids get sent to, and a place he feels he deserves to be. This project created a visual representation of the story by showcasing drawings of various objects and places described in the text, stripped of their context. These drawings were traced over several times, scanned, and inverted to make white lines on black paper, mimicking black paper described in the book. These slightly altered copies were then placed in succession to create a boiling animation, giving motion to still images. Some of the less complicated drawings were folded before being scanned, causing creases and lines which show up in the scans and add further texture and chaos. Each of the drawings represents a part of the story. In addition to the boiled animations, some of the images were animated in small ways. The most present is the door opening at the beginning to kick off the main body of the trailer, though other small aspects are animated as well in more subtle ways.
In addition to the drawings, there are also a few scenes depicting a paper crane, another symbol from the book representing perseverance and defiance. The scenes with the paper crane were done using stop-motion techniques to animate a lighthouse beacon, to move the paper crane, and later to transform it into a title card. All of the photography was done in a studio environment, using a black table and white paper to echo the black paper drawings, and to ease the transitions between drawn segments and stop-motion segments.
The last and arguably most important piece of this project is the soundtrack. All of the music was self-produced and self-composed using a MIDI keyboard, and various virtual instruments loaded on a computer. The music is accompanied by a variety of sound effects. Most were sourced from Freesound.org or Mynoise.net, though a few of the natural sounds were also self-recorded. All sources for sound were listed in the credits, alongside the course information related to the class I produced this trailer for.
