“The Belonging Kind” is an inspired short story that constantly creates images to the reader. The idea of a woman transforming and a man falling in love with her, as well as the film noir feeling and the fascinating plot, makes visualization “easy” but for sure more challenging.
| The primary idea was a vision of the woman, Antoinette, walking and changing clothes and general appearance according to the place that she was going. The specific story though is surely much more than just a woman changing appearances. And this had not only to be explored written but visually as well. |  |
 | The idea of the calendar as a medium that conveys the man’s thoughts and his own transformation indeed was the key to the further implementation of the project. The calendar defines the time and explains the place, elemental variables of each story and apart from that the specific medium provides the freedom and the space to put text on to it. |
The technical part is divided in three phases.
Phase one: Making Antoinette (Curious Labs Poser, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop)
The 3D Model of Antoinette was intended to be a woman’s body with good proportions and a generally athletic figure with lots of muscles. The choice was not a random one, as in most cyberpunk novels and stories the women are shown powerful human beings with seductive but dangerous bodies. The woman had to be distant but attractive at the same time, an alien but also a human.
| It was decided that the woman should not actually change dresses and shoes, because a simple prêt a porter was never a goal. Instead, all the colors described in the text were incorporated to the body and faceroom textures made. |  |
Finally the animation made was the 3Dmodel walking. For the changing of the one texture to another while animating, which resembles to the transformations, the Blender mathematical node in the Advanced Material Room of Poser was calculated and two skins at a time were connected to the 3D Model Properties.
Phase two: Making the calendar and the videos (Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Swish Max)
The calendar as mentioned above is a medium that defines the time and the place, and reveals the owner and its thoughts and personality. The Calendar style chose to be done was a leather notebook, with rough yellow pages that resembles to an old item and at the same time makes a huge contrast with the historic time and the high-tech figure of Antoinette.
The time chosen as a historic time is the near future, and that is 2026. All months, days and dates as shown in the first page of the calendar correspond to reality. In the year 2026 the dates will be exactly as shown.
In order not to be chaotic, a certain month was also chosen to place the story and that is July. All the notes of the main hero, Coretti, are stable handwriting, but all of his thoughts are Shockwave files. The thoughts are a mix of actual lines of the short story and personal thoughts. In two cases, quotes from the Adaptation script of Charlie Kaufman were used.
 | The calendar picture and texture is taken by personal photographs and composed later into Adobe Photoshop. All drawings are made by hand on actual paper or on screen using Wacom Digital Pen. The composition so that they could fit and match with the calendar pages was also made into Photoshop. |
Phase Three: Synthesis (Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Dreamweaver)
The final synthesis was made in Macromedia Flash. For the navigation minimal buttons were made. The reader has the option to jump to whatever page he or she desires, for flexibility reasons, although for the meaning and to understand the story correctly the regular day sequence should be followed.
To the days that Coretti follows Antoinette and captures her transformations, buttons were put along with notes of the places, next to certain hours. Each button reveals a different appearance.
With the thoughts and the movie files the goal is to see Coretti’s transformation through his thoughts and Antoinette’s transformation via images.
All sounds used are taken by the libraries of the sound designers from the MSc Sound Design.
