It's Just Jam.

A blueberry is slowly realizing that its physical environment is causing its body to decay until it turns into jam to be spread onto toast. 

The blueberry will start in a Bauhaus design style, using overlapping blending modes. The blueberry will start out happy, moving through the typical life cycle of a carton of blueberries. The main blueberry will be surrounded by other blueberries, but it will be the only sentient blueberry. He will be picked up in the store, washed, and placed in the fridge. His happiness will decay as his body slowly becomes mushy, with stop-motion overtaking the graphic animation. The stop motion animation will become more and more mushy with 2D drawn details over it to discolor the skin of the blueberry. The blueberry will grow mold and be cut open. I am considering using 2D drawn assets to physically rip the blueberry apart. The inside of the blueberry will spill out, drowning the blueberry in its own mush. It will then cut to live action bread popping out of a toaster. A figure will grab the toast and spread blueberry jam on it, ending the project. The genre would be psychological horror with some body horror affecting the blueberry. The film is somewhat open-ended, which I really like. The idea behind the project is to feel comfortable in a place you must leave to reach your full potential. While the blueberry is fine in the carton, it is contained and will eventually rot. Once it leaves the carton, it can be turned into jam; it can reinvent itself and become what it was meant to be, even if that is moldy jam. I want the audience to take away the idea that the blueberry was confined and realized its own suffering to transform into something greater than before. I would also love it if the audience came up with their own meanings for the blueberry, relating the blueberry’s experience to their own lives and emotions. I want the audience to feel confused and be able to repeatedly ponder what they watched, coming up with their own possible endings. Is it a happy ending?

Current Assets

These assets were made with Photoshop and Crazy Aaron's Liquid Glass Thinking Putty. I took pictures of the putty, then used the select subject tool in Photoshop to isolate the putty from the background. I recolored the putty using blending modes and solid color layers, simultaneously changing the levels and adjustment layers to get the correct amount of contrast and lighting. I hope to continue using this process or one similar in After Effects. 

Styleframes

I made styleframes to show the contrasting styles of the beginning and end of the film. The film will start off with pixelation and motion graphics done in After Effects and ToonBoom Harmony, while the ending will be stop motion and pixelation using After Effects and DragonFrame.