A WO(MAN) TURNING INTO A DOT

Cover for the film
Prolog for the film
Press to draw line from a dot - Effect house filter
Show hand to draw with your magical finger - Effect house filter
scene
Struggling to leave the 2d world
Traveling through the universe
Dance in form of slime - Effect house filter
Ending question
Team page
Try it yourself!

Inspiration

Our story is inspired by two books of fictions, “Flatland” by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott, in which the author uses geometry to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture and “A Man Becomes A Stick” by the Japanese novelist Abe Kōbō. Kōbō took the ordinary object of a stick, personified it, and asked the reader: “What is the meaning of life?” Through these different inspirations, we decided to create a story about self-discovery.

What it does

We trace the journey of a character traveling across dimensions and experiencing self-discovery.

The audience/user will transform into a dot, to a line, to a plane, to a sphere, and pursue difficult questions in life: Where am I? Who am I? What do I want to be?

Combining animations and poetic sketches, we piece together the narrative in the format of a letter - a conversation with ourselves - and a self-reflective space we’d like to share with our audience.

How we built it

We created the story in three steps. First, we had a brief storyboard sketch. Based on the storyline, we thought about how we can add Tik Tok filters in storytelling, and decided where the filters should appear. Second, we thought about the contents of the filter, which is we used mainly as transitions between dimensions in our story. Third, we made the story more solid by adding narratives and interesting visuals. _ Tools that we used to create this interactive short film include: Effect house, Maya, CapCut, Figma, Adobe ps, ai, pr, au, Substance Painter, etc. _

Challenges we ran into

Creating a story that delivers meaning within 3 days is not easy, there were a lot of discussions regarding how the story should unfold, how we should utilize Tik Tok technologies, and how we can incorporate the style from different artists/ media. Since none of the teammates has a developer background, we are also limited in terms of what kind of story we can create.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We explored the possibility of interactive storytelling through Tik Tok. We created an intimate and thought-provoking experience that engages the audience. We also stepped out of our comfort zone, and downloaded the Tik Tok app for the first time (all four of us!), and learned something new.

What we learned

We learned many different types of filters that are existing on Tik Tok, and we learned how to create new filters through Effect House.

What's next for A Wo(Man) Turning Into A Dot

We aim to upload the whole experience as a filter to Tik Tok (if they allow us!), and have people from all over the world to experience this intimate experience.