the Daoist

Feature development

Animated story of an old Daoist falling in love

Writer / Director

the Premise

To develop a unique story and look, focusing on a very Chinese subject.

Production

Early in my China experience I was asked if I wanted to direct a short that was meant to eventually become a film. Sure, it looked like fun. I wrote the script based on an existing idea. I changed quite a bit about it and was happy enough with it that we began creating the huge number of necessary assets.

more

Just one street scene where a chase happened was insanely complex for the time. In hindsight we needed a much larger team, but I was only the director. Although there was no real deadline, the producers had bitten off a lot. We had no pipeline system in place and kept track of everything through spreadsheets and filemaker.

interiors were very detailed and historically accurate.

I was very pleased with the look we achieved with the test, and there was quite a bit more we had finished, but I don't have a copy of it. Unfortunately the funding dried up, but it was a great experience while it lasted.