The short film is produced as class works in the course of digital compositing in the GUC (german university in cairo). Our general concept was to take a classic fairy tale and translate it into an Egyptian context.
The story we chose was Alice in Wonderland. It translates into "3Alia in Wonderland" (the "3" connoting the "deep" Arabic a),

 

We split the storyline into shorter chapters, one for each student of the class.
The students were asked to create the filmic visualisation of their individual chapter in a style and a technique that they enjoy and feel that they generally master; they were also asked to collaborate closely on creating the transitions between the individual clips, to ensure a certain flow in the flux of visual expressions applied.

 

The story of 3Alia in Wonderland is a bit complex as the film is effectively merging two timelines: the basic narration of Alice in Wonderland is superimposed with a chronology of defining events in Egypt during the past 2 years; different chapters are referring to ascending timeline events such as the 18 days of revolution (Jan. 2011), the parliamentary election and later the presidential election.

 

I was assigned the third chapter from Alice in Wonderland which was about the Caucus race. As for the Egyptian timeline, I was given the 18 days of the Revolution. 

CHAPTER 3 PLOT ANALYSIS

Alice finds herself on the shore with a group of wet animals and they try to find out together how they
can get dry. The mouse suggests that he was going to tell them the “driest” story he has ever known,
but since it was useless in getting them dry, the Dodo decided that they were going to do a caucus
race. They all kept running in a circle, haphazardly until half an hour later, the Dodo announced that the
race was over and that everybody has won. Alice then found herself forced to give everyone a prize and
receive something that she already had as a gift. She was surprised that she was the only one who
found that absurd. Then the mouse decided to tell his “tale” to Alice; she confused it with his “tail” so
she was confused during the whole story.

The main plot in my video would be presented in a form of a race of 18 laps. However, due to external factors
(which are always generating from the center), each one stops at a certain time and place thinking
that this is the end. So basically, the end of the race is something totally subjective and virtual. These
external factors are represented in tear gases, no signal in mobiles, Mubarak speeches, Battle of the
camels, Anti and Pro regime battles… There’s also a competition between the contestants, some of
them are trying to set each other up so they can arrive first, which represents the political conflicts
that happened in that time

PRE PRODUCTION
Character Design : Dimensions - Joints using wires

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE:
Inspired by Lotte Reiniger, cut out animation

Foreground is a silhouette

3d Effect made by middle ground (lower opacity) and background (less opacity) with colors. (or not)
Using transparent paper for the background and a light source under the table to make the silhouette
effect.