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King Midas

Storyboarding, Design, Animation, Art Direction

The Idea

A visual retelling of a children's story in a sixty second audio visual piece. I was initially torn between The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson and King Midas and His Golden Touch as both stories appealed to me through their morally grey characters with ambiguous motives. I eventually chose the latter as the story gave me more room to play with abstraction of visuals and the gold aspect allowed for an extremely limited contrasting colour palette.

The Story

There was once a king named Midas who did a good deed for a Satyr and was granted a wish by the God of wine, Dionysus. For his wish, Midas asked that whatever he touched would turn to gold. Although Dionysus tried to dissuade him, Midas insisted that the wish was an excellent one, and it was granted!
Excitedly, Midas went about touching all sorts of things, turning them to gold. Soon Midas became hungry. He picked up a piece of food, but he couldn't eat it, for it had turned to gold in his hand! "I'll starve," moaned Midas, "Perhaps this was not such a good wish after all!"

Midas' beloved daughter, seeing his dismay, threw her arms around him to comfort him, and, she too turned to gold!
"The golden touch is no blessing," cried Midas. He went to the river and wept.

The sand of that river turned as yellow as 'fool's gold' for it was there, people said, that King Midas washed away the curse of the golden touch with his own tears.

Storyboard

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