I do not plan to create character animation, so I approached the character’s body using a modular sculpting workflow. I used pre-rigged character assets to pose the figures in Maya, then imported them into ZBrush. From there, I extracted the parts I needed and further modified them to fit the design.
I envisioned the character in a seated pose, holding a knife and scissors while dissecting a corpse. The brother’s head hangs limply to the side, his facial flesh frozen into a bitter, strained smile—an unsettling and spine-chilling sight.
This week, I continued refining my previous animation and recorded new reference footage, aiming for a more exaggerated and “animated” performance. For some of the action transitions, I experimented with easing to make the overall movement feel more natural and fluid.
The room has a bed, a cabinet, and disposable slippers — it looks like a normal hotel room. Two people are lying next to each other on a double bed. Everything in the room is arranged in a very neat and matching way.
But even though it looks clean and comfortable, the room doesn’t feel warm or welcoming. Instead, it feels cold and empty — just like the characters themselves, who seem lonely, worried, or deeply sad.
2. Costume, Hair & Make Up
The man in the image dressed in a dark jacket, a light-colored shirt, and brown trousers. His hair is graying, his face looks somewhat aged, and he has distinct dark circles under his eyes. The woman beside him has simple brown hair and is wearing an orange jacket and blue shorts. The two appear to be a middle-aged or elderly couple, both sharing a similar look of exhaustion and sadness, as if they have just completed a long journey or are weighed down by some unspoken burden.
3. Facial Expressions & Body Language
Although the two characters share a bed, a palpable emotional chasm lies between them. The man’s gaze is distant, the fatigue around his eyes evident, and his rigid posture reveals a deep sense of oppression. The woman, with her arms crossed in a defensive posture and a tense expression, communicates clear unease and wariness. Together, their demeanor and gestures vividly illustrate the profound emotional distance separating them.
4. Lighting and Colour
The picture uses soft indoor lighting and a warm but dim color scheme to create a calm yet heavy feeling. The milky-white and pink setting looks peaceful, but the difference in the characters’ clothing colors shows their emotional distance. This makes the whole scene, though soft and ordinary, feel lonely and detached.
5. Positioning of characters/objects within the frame
Two people lie flat on the bed, placed symmetrically with a clear space between them, showing their emotional distance. The bed is centered and acts as both the main focus and a divider. Slippers and a suitcase on the left add a realistic touch. The plain background and still, balanced layout make the whole scene feel lonely and emotionally detached.
6. What role does the shot choice (Cinematography) play in the scene.
The shot uses a high angle that looks down on the two characters in bed. This makes the viewer feel like an outsider, highlighting the distance and loneliness between them. The horizontal composition lines up the people and the camera with the bed, creating a very still image. This lack of movement makes the emotions feel stuck, showing their inner heaviness and stiff relationship.
The witch’s dungeon is dark and cluttered, filled with chains, skulls, and a bubbling cauldron, all exuding her malevolence.
When she finds Snow White and blocks the window, she severs the connection between Snow White and the outside world, turning the cottage into a confined trap.
This tense moment is intensified by the behavior of the animals: the small creatures flee in panic, while two vultures lurk nearby, waiting for an opportunity. These contrasting reactions foreshadow the impending danger.
2. Costume, Hair & Make Up
Snow White’s design embodies the classic Disney princess look. She wears a blue top and a bright yellow skirt, accented by a vibrant red bow in her hair. This color palette is cheerful and vivid, full of vitality and innocence. Her sleek black bob, snow-white skin, rosy cheeks, and clear, wide eyes make her appear innocent, kind, and somewhat vulnerable.
In contrast, the Witch’s design is thoroughly imbued with menace. She hunches over, shrouded entirely in a black cloak, with a hood covering most of her face. Her nose is sharply hooked like an eagle’s beak, topped with a wart, while her face is covered in wrinkles. Her hair is gray and unkempt, her eyes are sunken and dark, and her teeth are broken and missing. Above all, her gnarled hands and long, sharp, untrimmed nails directly reveal her ugliness and sinister nature.
3. Facial Expressions & Body Language
Snow White’s facial expressions and body language always show her innocence and vulnerability. Her clear, wide eyes, gentle brows, and soft smile all express a trust that has no guard.
Her movements are light and graceful. Even when the Witch forces her way in and blocks the window, Snow White only steps back slightly as if startled, her posture revealing complete passiveness and fragility.
In contrast, the Witch’s expressions and body language are full of fake drama and direct aggression. Her face switches quickly between a twisted fake smile and moments of exposed fierceness. Her movements are overly dramatic, especially her claw-like hands, which always move in an exaggerated and forceful way, pressing forward like a weapon, full of threat.
4. Lighting and Colour
In terms of color application, Snow White and her surroundings form a bright and harmonious world. She is dressed in highly saturated blue and yellow, while the small animals around her also boast rich and varied colors. The forest outside her window is full of life, bathed in sunlight.
All of this stands in sharp contrast to the witch and her symbolic companions: the witch is cloaked in dark attire, and her ravens and vultures are rendered in shades of gray and black. This use of low-saturation colors directly reflects her inner malice and cunning.
Lighting design further intensifies this opposition. The witch’s dungeon is dark and eerie, with the only visible light source seemingly coming from the cauldron where the poisoned apple is brewed. This faint, eerie light stretches and distorts the shadows of figures and objects, casting them onto the walls and creating a strong sense of horror.
In contrast, Snow White is positioned by a sunlit window, enveloped in warm, natural light. When the witch blocks the window with her body, her dark shadow instantly devours the light—a visual shift rich with symbolism, heralding the arrival of danger.
The poisoned apple shifts eerily from a ghostly green, symbolizing death and evil, to a vibrant red. This unnatural color transformation suggests the deadly danger lurking beneath its beautiful surface, while the ominous fluorescent glow further intensifies its deceptive nature.
5. Positioning of characters/objects within the frame
In terms of composition, the Witch consistently dominates the visual narrative. While brewing the poisoned apple, she is often positioned at the center of the frame, her exaggerated gestures aggressively occupying much of the pictorial space, asserting her control. When luring Snow White, she blocks the window with her body; her massive silhouette not only devours the light but also physically constricts Snow White’s living space, transforming the once-cozy cottage into a suffocating prison.
In stark contrast lies Snow White’s passivity. Her movements are restrained and timid, and her physical space is severely compressed by the Witch’s presence. Furthermore, the Witch’s motions frequently follow diagonal lines within the frame—an unstable compositional choice that intensifies her aggression and menace. Snow White, meanwhile, is often confined within stable horizontal or vertical structures, visually underscoring her powerlessness and entrapment.
6. What role does the shot choice (Cinematography) play in the scene.
In filming the Witch, the sequence extensively employs medium close-ups and extreme close-ups to precisely capture her grotesque expressions and exaggerated gestures, giving tangible form to the character’s malice and madness. Combined with sudden and rapid camera movements, her unpredictability and menacing presence are powerfully amplified.
When the Witch’s shadow envelops the cottage, the perspective deftly shifts to Snow White’s subjective viewpoint: the Witch’s distorted figure dominates most of the frame, transforming compositional aggression into palpable visual oppression and foreshadowing the arrival of doom.
Furthermore, the cinematography is not confined to the interior of the cottage. Through cross-cutting, the film interweaves reactions from the forest animals. The shots of birds fleeing in panic and vultures eagerly awaiting their opportunity create a microcosm of good versus evil. This technique not only heightens the tense and uneasy atmosphere but also uses nature as a metaphor to signal the impending crisis.
This week, I mainly focused on modeling the heads of the two characters. I wanted them to convey a sense of distortion and grotesqueness, so I intentionally warped their facial features, making them appear smeared and uneven.
In particular, the brother’s face has a melting quality, as if it were slowly dissolving. The psychological unease and discomfort created by this effect is something I find very effective. Rather than turning the characters into overt, aggressive monsters, I aim for a more subtle form of horror—one that quietly unsettles the viewer and creates a lingering sense of dread.
When attempting to connect two actions, I recorded my own performance as a reference, but the overall acting was not exaggerated or expressive enough. During the animation process, the character’s movement still appeared somewhat stiff. Moving forward, I plan to further refine the timing and performance details to improve the animation.
I chose Waltz with Bashir as an example of an animated documentary that challenges traditional ideas of documentary legitimacy. The film explores director Ari Folman’s fragmented memories of the 1982 Lebanon War, using animation to reconstruct experiences that cannot be fully represented through live-action footage. Rather than presenting an objective historical account, the film focuses on personal memory, trauma, and reflection.
The work engages strongly with themes of politics, government, ethical responsibility, and human rights. Animation allows the film to visualise suppressed memories, dreams, and emotional states, making it particularly effective in addressing the psychological impact of war. In this context, animation does not weaken the documentary form but strengthens it by communicating subjective truth.
The use of animation is central to the film’s meaning. Many of the events shown exist only through personal testimony, so animation becomes a necessary tool rather than a stylistic choice. The combination of animated imagery with recorded interviews helps ground the film in reality while allowing space for abstraction.
Overall, Waltz with Bashir demonstrates that animated documentary can be a legitimate and powerful medium. By prioritising emotional truth and ethical reflection over visual realism, the film shows how animation can address complex political and social issues in ways that conventional documentary cannot.
This week, I found more reference images, most of which are related to the character.
I designed my character—or rather, the monster—as a pair of twins. I drew inspiration from elements that evoke psychological fear, such as preserved corpses, freak shows, and unethical experiments from centuries ago, including prefrontal lobotomy.
I designed the character as a pair of conjoined twins, a brother and a sister. The brother’s body is withered and decaying, on the verge of death. They work as taxidermists. In an attempt to save her brother, the sister conducts a series of dark and forbidden experiments.
The taxidermy room is filled with specimens stitched together from human and animal corpses, and at its center may stand an electrotherapy chair resembling an instrument of torture. The sister believes she can extract her brother’s soul from his dying body and transfer it into these reconstructed corpses, unaware that her actions are only causing him greater suffering. Through this character, I aim to portray the sister’s nearly obsessive, pathological love and her overwhelming desire for control.
Below are the sketches I drew while exploring the character.
Visually, they have asymmetrical and disjointed limbs. The brother’s body is withered, twisted, and close to death, with one arm drawn into his chest and bound by bandages, leaving him no choice but to endure the sister’s various experiments inflicted upon him.
