Siew Li and Ah Fai
Production Blog/Site for Siew Li and Ah Fai, an animated third-year thesis film
created by Low Hui Li and Theresa Cheong
SIEW LI
FINAL DESIGN
SIEW LI is a grumpy old lady mechanic. Despite being semi-retired, she still likes to repair machines and appliances. Siew Li is notorious among her neighbours because of her skill but even more as a result of the racket she makes when fixing.
Siew Li's general silhoulette is angular, spiky and bulky, which embodies her rough personality and her past as a mechanic. The belt shows her practical nature, as well as visually balances her body proportion.
Siew Li is an old lady, and she moves less fast than Ah. F.A.I. Siew Li's spiky silhouette contrasts with Ah F.A.I's friendly rounded silhouette.
For the color tests, we retained the batik patterns on Siew Li's shirt from the previous concepts, as it is distinctively Asian. We went with the purple/blue color scheme (bottom right, top row yellow belt design) as the cool colors reflect her practical personality.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
In the inital concept, Siew Li was meant to be a old lady with little mechanical knowledge and a hoarding obsession. Thus, she was portrayed as an ordinary Singapore auntie. However, as the story continued to develop, Siew Li's role in the story was changed, and we felt that Siew Li's appearance didn't match her previous occupation as a mechanic.
While this version of Siew Li was not used, we retained the batik clothing patterns on her shirt in the final version, as it matched her Singaporean origins.
As Siew Li's role as the mechanic was solidified in the story, we tried to develop more designs around her 'rough and tough' character trait. We picked and chose the features that we liked in our designs, and combined them into one final design.
