Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546404
this page: (from left) Concept art for the Manang chase scene; The character of Bungi takes on different forms depending on his mood. opposite page: (from top, clockwise) When Manang is present in a sequence, the character's menacing style shifts the movie's tone; Jo and Raissa's charm bracelets reflect their shared memories; Concept art for Manang. CHANGE IS GOOD Forgotten Island moves from the real world of the 1990s Philippines to the fantasy island of Nakali, a play on the Tagalog word nakalimutan, which means "to forget." When this happens, the look of the film changes drastically. Where the Philippines had been warm and homey, Nakali is a burst of neon colorways and the squiggly lines and triangles that dominated the era's graphic design. "Nakali is a '90s rave party, [Jo and Raissa's] wild last night together," says Carlson. When the girls lose their memories of their first night on Nakali and rely on flashbacks from new characters they meet to figure out what happened, the styles continue to change again and again. Each character's recollec- tion is different, both in look (shifting between varied 2D art styles) and sub- stance (they all tell a conflicting story). "Their memories reflect their point of view and their personalities," explains Mercado. The story of Raww, a loner who wants to be cool and buff, is done in the style of Street Fighter, while Prince Mermahn, a glamorous, shallow, romantic party boy, goes full Sailor Moon. Then there's Bungi, a mama's boy who weaves his memories in a way that turns the girls' night into a tapestry. None of the memories prove to be fully accurate, but they can all be combined to resemble the truth. The climax of the film pushes the question of how to represent memories onscreen to its limits as Jo and Raissa fight a demon who wants to take their memories of each other away for good. The team played with numerous effects: memories shattering into glass, falling apart into Polaroids, and washing away in the waves of a beach. The pièce de résistance is a watercolor effect where the colors fade out of the memories entirely. "We looked at the process of watercolor and how water spreads the color and pigment out onto the [paper], then asked how we would do that in reverse," says Carlson. A more concrete way the team ex- plored what it could mean to lose one's memories was through Manang. The film's villain, who feeds on memories, is based on The Dreaded Manananggal, an iconic aswang (shape-shifting mon- ster) in Filipino folklore, with the ability to split its body in two. Given the film's themes of separation, Crawford and Mercado saw it as a natural fit for their story from the start. Because her body can separate completely, Manang became one of the most complicated characters to rig in DreamWorks' history, requiring three unique rigs. "She has to function as a whole and separately, plus she F E AT U R E 26 KEYFRAME also has detachable wings," explains Crawford. But this severing is about more than what her physical body can do in relation to propelling the action. Manang splitting from herself has symbolic meaning: emotionally, a part of her has been disconnected from her own memories. When deciding how to resolve Manang's arc, Crawford and Mercado considered dementia. "People with de- mentia often feel like outsiders because everyone else knows something they don't. It turns into anger, paranoia," says Mercado. This framing allowed them to explore how important memories are to a person's sense of self. Through story, design, effects, and animation, Forgotten Island pulls audiences into a world that transforms memories into magic—and reminds viewers how magical they are in the real world, too.