Opening over the shadowy side of Panda’s Patisserie at sunset, this scene is the most carefree and calming of the collection. All of our characters are present and seem to be enjoying themselves. Panda Chef is watering the tulips, Apothekitty is sipping on an ice cold glass of milk, and Magical Manatee is skating down the bike path (not pictured here). The color palette is highly saturated, a bit campy and queer, with texture and details given to municipalities that are meant to spark joy. Diegetic sound design mostly draws attention to the character’s actions, while the music is reflecting on the feeling of being outside at sunset.

In this scene the viewer is formally introduced to Magical Manatee, a brilliant blue and pink being that floats through life contriving the fabric of reality around them. They bask in the sun on a light purple picnic blanket, surrounded by candles, a snack, a book and basically anything you would need to have a great day at the park. A record player spins Eliza Jellyfish’s classic rock anthem, “bury the colonizers, then we’ll talk ”. This song hints at the events leading up to this world’s class war, paired with ambient park sound design that clues us in to the larger community surrounding our characters.

Apothekitty has a groundbreaking idea, and they can’t stop thinking about it. They won’t sleep until they work out every detail of the plan. Hyperactivity and obsession leave them feeling euphoric, but it is unstable. The clock on the wall and light from outside show time passing at an unrealistic rate, and that Apothekitty has accidentally stayed up all night. Sound design– featuring my star role as the pet bir– pulls the listener’s ears around the room to everything that might make noise and distract Apothekitty. The music is exaggeratedly enjoyable, characterized by smooth guitar tones, vibraphone and bells; yet it becomes distorted, relentless and grating over time.

Panda chef finds a mysterious sparkling egg washed up on the shore of the ocean and gets apothekitty to help identify it. The pair have no idea what, or who, could be inside. While this scene includes a linear plotline, the choice of setting the frame rate to one (1) frame per second, and keeping the perspective stationary gives the illusion of a camera rapidly taking pictures to document the story. For this reason I pushed the boundaries of dynamic poses and facial expression in the animation style, and utilized mostly non-diegetic sound design. Meta-diegetic ocean sounds heard in this scene are made by my voice, clearly a photographer’s reimagining of the soundscape in the pictures.

The soundtrack was created using a 16 beat melodic step-sequencer patch built in Max/ MSP, which can toggle between sin, square and triangle waves. On step sequencers, musical notes are rounded into steps of equal time-intervals, and users can add or take away notes to the repeating grid pattern in real time to create subtle harmonic/ rhythmic shifts. After recording a session in Max/MSP, I imported the audio files into Logic Pro to manipulate the frequencies further with filters and effects. The pulsing, quantized nature of the music achieved by the step-sequencer lines up aesthetically with the one frame per second flow of this video.

While looking at a board of old polaroid photos, Panda Chef begins to dissociate and lose grip on reality. They feel as though they are perpetually falling, spiraling, floating, in an endless abyss, even when surrounded by the things they love. The scene cuts abruptly to a shot of them peppering a pot of soup in slow motion, an out of body experience. Questions of identity swirl and haunt as the only text repeated by my disembodied voice are “Panda Chef”; unedited, time stretched and reversed. The beat samples kitchen utensils and appliances to juxtapose lucidity with the disorienting liminal space.