My Time Capsule:
The Unearthing
The Setting:
Its the year 2145
A new habitat is slowly forming on a land that has resurfaced over the past 50 years. Humans are seen building new houses, clearing the wild vegetation to prepare for agricultural use. Technological devices left from the height of its evolution in late 2070’s, the only modern artifacts durable enough to survive Reversal period, now aids humans in this new era. In this world, our protagonist, 13 years old Aisha unearths a fascinating object that holds stories from a time humanity long forgot about.
Constructing the Storyboard:
When I was studying animation as a minor during my undergrad, I got to play around with storyboarding. By combining the elements of camera angles, various types of sketching, illustrations, and small descriptions, I could relay the continuity of my story through pictures in a way that I could never capture with writing alone. That is why I decided to combine both the comic book style of dialogue and format of storyboarding for animation to tell this story. I also intend on experimenting with the format of the images from hand drawn sketches to scanned pictures and installing edited photos of the time capsule objects to observe what effect it creates for the reader.
page one of my storyboard: Initially I started sketching out the story in a comic book style. Then I edited in the pictures of my time capsule and the objects it contains
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Reflections:
After reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics piece, I was inspired to narrate in this way. I wanted to convey the message of climate change and the unchecked progress of how technology is lending power to the factors that are affecting our lives and our environment. My country, Bangladesh, is set to be submerged by 50% due to rising sea levels by 2050. I wanted people in the future to get the sense of the urgencies, our dreams and aspirations and what it was like living in this day to date.