I started this project as a color key and storyboard for what will ultimately be a music video for the song “Cyprus” by Sarah Kinsley. The song is about two people reaching out to each other across time, which inspired my idea of a girl who time travels to Big Sur, California in the 1850s when the first Chinese immigrants settled there.

I started by gathering references of both modern day Big Sur and the Chinese whaling village in the 1850s. I researched the history of Asian immigration in California, as well as prominent artists at the time who painted the California coast. I was inspired by the paintings of Chiura Obata, a Japanese painter who immigrated to California.

Using this research as reference, I created a color gradient to show the progression of color throughout the video. I wanted the story to start in darkness, then get progressively lighter as the the girl discovers more of her environment. I used reference photos of Big Sur to create the colors of the gradient.

Then, I sketched out the scenes of the storyboard and positioned them on the color gradient. I used the gradient as reference to color the scenes for the color key.