Shangri-La the coffee shop : storyboard

Professor: Brian Ajhar

This is the assignment of the class. The professor let us did what we love to; therefore I tried doing a storyboard. The process was fun and I learned something between drawing this work!

The story was based on an article I written in the beginning of the semester in this class. Besides, I had done a bust design for the main character; you can see her by visiting my Facebook page:

The draft of the sence of the coffee shop.

Shangri-La the coffee shop

B.c.N.y.

There is a small coffee shop on one side of a street in a busy city. It called “Shangri-La”. No one knows when the shop exists.  In this small, long and narrow shop only has a solid wood bar; there are four wooden bar stools in front of the bar. It is also the only space in the shop allows people sitting and sipping coffee. Fortunately, because of the business is slack, the owner doesn’t worry too much about someone will complain about lack of seat.

In the shop, the dark wooden walls are decorated lots of strange stuff.  You can see from Deer Head Mount to Swallowtail butterfly specimen; from cuckoo clocks to flower store sign. In addition to what the things that normal human being can understand, there are numerous odd paintings, photos and objects. Such as bizarre scenery with creepy feature in a photo, and a painting that seems to depict one part of freaky cells and a rabbit specimen which has 2 pairs of eyes and spider’s legs. It is hard to see the walls because it was covered by these items.

Around the top of shop, four old style street lights are located on each side of walls near the ceiling. Behind the bar, a menu is written on a huge woody board which is placed on the top of cupboard. On the ceiling, there are multiple black tubes across each other. The scene of ceiling becomes a strong contrast to the organic objects beneath it.

The owner of this strange coffee shop is a girl who has a young appearance; she has blond hair with Trendy bob cut, a pair of thin eyebrows and a little nose; ocean blue irises with sapphire pupils of her eyes; a pair of light coral lips on the ivory skin. She usually wears a brown vest with a white shirt underneath, and combined with a deep sky blue jean. Although she has an outstanding look, she normally lacks energy. She always puts her elbows on the bar and rests her head in her hands, looking at somewhere in the shop languidly.

The menu of coffee only has two selections can be chosen. That is vanilla latte and Hazelnut Macchiato. “I don’t want to supply a taste of coffee that I don’t like.”  She replied it and read a newspaper when a costumer curious about the menu one day.

The shop opens from 4 at noon to 2 in the morning. During the daytime, there almost are no customers entering to the shop. In this period, the mostly action she do is drinking a coffee which was made by herself, and counting how many passersby passed through the storefront.  But when the moon starts rising, this tiny shop begins to have people visiting it. She has to start working like the owner of this coffee shop.

The most of customers are coming at midnight.  In fact, this is the coffee shop opening for monsters and aliens who are hiding in this society with a human being’s form. The owner, the girl, is a mixed-blood with monster mother and human father. Because her parents love to travel, then they are always out, therefore she has to maintain it.  That’s why she always looks reluctant.

At midnight, sometimes the customers in the shop will release a part of camouflage. So you can see a crocodile tail on a giant man’s back, a gazelle horn on a young lady’s head when they are drinking and many aliens with the gray skin tracing each other on the floor. In this situation, unless she is in a good mood, she usually beats them with a roll of newspaper and asks them to hide themselves properly.

All of the odd collection in the shop came from those non-human customers. When they go back to their homeland, they would bring some SPECIAL gifts for her. Although she thought these gifts could become an excuse for covering their creepy feature in case, she will never admit that she actually love these stuff. This place for her is like a nest, she can feel relax staying here. For other customers it is the same. They can do chatting about their motherlands or exchange the information of how to adopt the human society better. 

At midnight, she occasionally releases her tiny ivory horn on her forehead and the transparent wings on her back. The horn and wings are emitting a slight yellow glory. She will turn off the lights, light several candles, and then sit on the stool. She will eye around the customers in front of her, clear her throat, play a ukulele and sing a song for recalling the memories of individuals’ motherland, the memories that never can be recovered. Her sound of singing is clear and pure. In the middle of singing, her wings are spreading and folding with the rhythm of song.

After singing, she waves her wings a little bit, lifts her head, closes her eyes and takes a long breathe. She thinks that the coffee shop will open tonight as usual.