This is my finished final project. I have documented the creation of it below along with an explanation. It was animated in C4D and edited in After Effects along with Premiere. All sounds except for dialogue was from freesound.org.
Overall, I'm fine with this piece. I think the pacing is still a bit strange when played with the dialogue. I'm not sure how I'm going to fix it, but for now, I will stay at this. I found it very vulnerable for me and almost awkward or embarrassing. It was almost hard to show it to others since it was so personal.
I wanted to show the torment and relative thought process of someone with obsessive compulsive disorder or just an anxiety disorder (of course, OCD is a type of anxiety disorder).
One of the hardest parts of this animation was not even the animating part. I finished writing and recording the dialogue last because I had avoided it the entire time I was working on the video. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Did I even need dialogue? Would it be too empty without words? When I was suggested to perhaps narrate a personal story talking about my disorder, I was mortified. That sounded so raw...and awkward.
Nevertheless, I think I stepped out of my comfort zone for the sound. I voiced one character myself and all the dialogue was based on things I had told my therapists before. It's hard to get up and put yourself so openly to the world, but hopefully that created something worthwhile.
The decision for the title was also quite awkward for me. I was taking a certain amount of risk by cutting half of the title out in the beginning title sequence. The reasoning behind it was that, one, OCD is characterized by repetitive destructive habits. I wanted to suggest to the viewer that the main character is accepting help, but there is always a possibility that she will go back to her old habits. The second reason was that a common type of obsession that most people know is the obsession of hygiene and disease. When picturing OCD, most would picture a person washing their hands a million times. Since this video is not so obvious with what it is about, I wanted the title to subtly hint at what the disorder is. Of course, knowing what the disorder is not that important. So long as the viewer gets so kind of message regarding anxiety, then I think I did well enough.
Work in Progress Images and Details
I have been trying to represent the emotions of OCD and the effects it causes for many years throughout my art career, but I've always struggled to really express the complete feeling.
My main idea is I want to make an animation about the troubles and daily emotions of a person suffering with OCD and anxiety/depression. As seen from my past works above, I have attempted to describe the feelings of pain, confusion, sadness, and hate. Trying to express how it feels was so difficult and I've found that the more I've tried to describe it all, the more I wasn't describing it. Thus, this time I tried to focus on only one aspect to describe the concepts of this terrible disease. Perhaps less is more.
My concept is the focus on nails to represent the destruction of self and others because of OCD. I hope it can convey that this destruction of self is because of a deep mental fear that comes with the disorder. An unknown character stares down at his/her hands. The hands will start off in very submissive or shy poses. For example, the hands will hold each other and be balled up into each other. This shows the character is nervous. Soon, the hands revert and the character now looks at his/her nails. The character will notice a stray piece of flesh on the nail. I think there should be a dramatic moment where the first ripping of the flesh happens which starts the rushing in of fear. The tearing of flesh will accompany the sound of ripping paper I think.
I think as music, there will be ambient noise but also a narration of the short story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." I think the reason why I want this is because of more personal reasons but also because it shows the confusion of self-love and love for others when OCD is in the mix.
This was one iteration of the animation I had made before I changed models and restarted my entire project. Looking back on it now, I'm really happy I decided to restart. The cracks in the model is a huge eye-sore. The fingers are also kind of strange. Restarting really forced me to focus on quality over just getting work done.