The Enchanting Set Design of ‘Atlas: The Cursed Musician’s Tale’
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- Bachelor – Animation
- Practices
- Honours Programme
- Minor
- External minor at the ECUAD (Emily Carr University of Art and Design) but graduating within Honors Program (Visual Culture)
‘Atlas: The Cursed Musician’s Tale’, is a story about a young boy Atlas, who grows up in a harbor with parents who are traveling merchants, trading and gathering antique musical instruments from all around the world. The only time they would visit home is to drop off their findings.
Between their rare visits, Atlas immerses himself in learning every new instrument his parents brought back, which helps him ignore his feelings of bitter loneliness. He grows up to become a world-renowned, yet aggrandizing musician, swallowed by his selfishness and greed. Lost in his own talent and pride, Atlas leaves no room for love in his heart nor any regard for other souls.
After messing with the wrong heart, Atlas gets turned into a ghost through a curse that challenges him to look inward and experience vulnerability in different realms: the dimension of the living, the dead and the restless. He morphs into a cloud, filled with instruments ancient and new, waiting to be played all at once to a melody that would break the curse.
In all his bitterness and sorrow, Atlas wanders through the world to find a way to set himself free. Little does he know, the melody requires a particular rhythm for the curse to be lifted, one that is made of two heartbeats syncing up.
Echoes of Destiny
One day, Atlas stumbles into an uncanny place: a haunted jazz bar. This place represents the otherworldly space in between life and death, as it is filled with souls that have passed on from life, yet never found peace as they are forever fuelled by greed. Here, Atlas is juxtaposed
with a room full of dark souls, just like his, marking the scene as a major character development point as he realizes that he has to change his ways, or else he is to spend eternity stuck in the echoes of his own destiny.
Collaborative credits:
Music by Nick Verschoor
Sound Design by Venetia Theodosiou
Wallpaper Design by Rada Skumova
About me:
I am a visual storyteller, contextualizing in production and set design.
I have a deep interest in existential themes. My work draws inspiration from anthropology, dreams, the subconscious, and the supernatural, as well as concepts like time and time travel and human behavior, especially in the context of times in which certain technologies emerged, such as the late 1800s (photographs, vehicles, telephones).
I embrace uncertainty in my creative process, transforming existing elements or shapes into something unexpected and putting them in surprising contexts. This approach allows me to infuse stories and narratives into ink splashes, designing quirky characters or repurposing objects from my environment as props in my stop-motion sets.
Inspired by the dark, yet playful narratives of Henry Selick and macabre tales of Edward Gorey, I like to blend fantastical, whimsy, dark, yet quirky elements together to create characters living in alternative realities, unburdened by human limitations but still wrestling with universal human struggles. Through my art, I reflect upon existential topics and explore solutions to issues without constraints, using it as a form of personal expression. This is why I want to create something I am passionate about, as it reflects my authentic vision and the style of stories I can bring to the animation industry: stories about human existence, life, and vulnerability, wrapped in a dark, yet romantic style.
