Shaolin Soccer Development://

Development from storyboards for the tv ident promoting Shaolin Soccer, a film directed and featuring Stephen Chow as the leading actor. The film is basically a blend of football and Shaolin Kung Fu put together with Chow's trademark comedy. I wanted to the keep the idea quite simple, focusing on the subject of football, while still incorporating the subtitled beginning.  The film is quite fast paced, with highly exaggerated CGI effects. I decided to use the motion of a dot to represent a football, which would knock the subtitles out of place, leaving space for the title to move into frame.


Shaolin Soccer 01 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

First development, I decided to use a grey fading to white gradient as the background as it it made it slightly more engaging. I limited the colour palette to black aswell as I wanted the emphasis to be on the motion and the transitions rather than the subjective matter. The first attempt was just to test out whether I have picked a suitable dialogue for the subtitles and also to review the general timing that I had planned from my storyboards. I think the main issue with the first attempt that I have noticed is the timing, the beginning seems quite slow, until it is interrupted quite suddenly by the black dot. From there on, everything seems quite rushed. I think from here, I need to play around with balancing out the motion more, probably adding something moving at the start to accompany the type.


Shaolin Soccer 02 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Minor tweaks were made to this, with emphasis on the timing. The final transition with the black circle has been adjusted so it runs a lot smoother. I am still unsure about whether it works, the motion of the football coming out of nowhere just seems too abrupt.


Shaolin Soccer 03 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Further developing this, I decided to add a bit more motion to the beginning of the ident. I decided add some clouds to make it seem as though the ident's falling from the sky, with the dot falling ahead and bouncing back from the ground. I think this definitely makes the ident a lot more dynamic in terms of the motion. Aswell as the major change with added motion at the start, I've also adjusted the timing by an extra second; shifting the animation half a second earlier, allowing more time for the title to appear.