The Tin Machines

An eerie reflection of our own world.

The Tin Machines is a 3D animation project that has been on my mind for quite some time. I have always wanted to produce an animation. Although I have got a few animations under my credit, none of them ended up the way I had envisioned them.

Well it’s mostly due to a lack of time and also the lack of knowledge in my 3D software, 3D max 5. Not to mention the hassle of juggling various modules in one hand, and also maintaining my final year group’s harmony while trying to complete my diploma.

In the end this project hit a road block because of my various commitments. Now that I have completed my diploma course, incidentally it is a diploma in Multimedia Technology (DMMT for short); I have invested some time and thought on how I might approach this animation project.

The story which I have vaguely conceived is about of a newly made Tin Machine which finds itself in a world that has no singular consciousness. This machine world lives only for the sole purpose of efficiency and productivity, everything else is an inconsideration. The Tin Machine slowly becomes aware of his emotionless world and starts on a quest of self realization.

My approach for this project would be to go beyond the overly hyped photorealism of the Hollywood CGI world and explore "painterly-realism" which has its focus not on recreating reality like a camera does, but as a painter would – drawing out and epitomizing the emotion and meaning of a particular moment or relationship.

More concretely I want to go beyond the traditional narrative form of film and explore what has called "psycho-realism" where you show the internal thoughts and emotions of a character. If a person emotionally feels "shattered" then we would see them literally crumble to the floor in shards of broken glass. I want to see visually what a character feels and thinks internally. Dissecting his inner thoughts and portraying them as characters and not as emotions.

Since most animated films - like their live action counterparts - have been based in the traditional narrative structure, there are no roadmaps to go by, which meant I have to do a lot of experimenting to arrive at how I want to tell my story.

To develop a scene I would have to try to think of the emotional dynamic of a situation, how it emotionally feels to be there, and then try to epitomize that so the viewer would recognize this "place" from their own experiences and bring those feelings into their viewing. Because I want use a method of storytelling that interwove a traditional narrative with stream of consciousness emotional imagery, I would not only have to think of situations which epitomized a certain relationship, but also of images and metaphors that emotionally conduce these feelings.

Yet regrettably the progress on this animation is minimal. There is a huge number of stuff that needs to be sorted out and I just don’t seem to have the expertise right now to pull this one off.

Someday when I eventually improve my skills I will produce this animation.