Making My Animated Short Film

Design

I have always been interested in drawing animals and thinking about their stories, so this was a perfect subject matter for me. As I researched, I found that crows as well as bees seem to be a hummingbird's biggest threat. I first needed a hummingbird. I went through many different designs until I ended up with the grumpy Ruby-Throated Chad (even if he doesn't have a ruby throat).

I knew I wanted my crows to look threatening, so I treated them as a trio to make them more threatening at once. Joey was designed to be the leader of the group. Artie is the muscle and goes in to take the beatings from Chad. Joey is the newbie and is somewhat in training, trying to prove his chops. However, he seems to have a lot to learn about Chad.

At first, I was going to have many bees. They were supposed to be the film's villains. I decided against this idea and went with a single bee that would help Chad make friends. The rounded nature of a bumblebee ended up being too cute to be evil. Also, when the bee started to become rounder, I changed her from a boy to a girl. I named her Trish. Knowing the obvious name would be B or Bea or Bee, I flipped this shortening of Beatrice around and used the other nickname to make from the name.

I wanted this story to take place in a setting I'm familiar with. After all, the idea came from the area I live. I designed this front yard to reflect my own, using the middle tree as Chad's tree. He was the center of the story and his tree would be the center of the yard. I made one giant image of the yard and used it to place the camera wherever I needed it in the film. 90% of the backgrounds seen in the final animation comes from the same file.

Textured digital paintings with bold colors have always caught my eye. This was a way to finally try it out. I love the way it turned out and interacted with my story.

Storyboards

Once I had a story and characters, I began storyboarding. This was a chance to get what was floating around in my head to be on paper. My story felt more concrete once I had visuals to go along with my plot points. I went the traditional route, using pencil and paper. With this, I could set all the drawings out on a table, mix them around, and see the best way to tell the story visually.

The next step in storyboarding was an animatic. This is where the storyboards come to life and act more like a final film. It just didn't have colored characters or sound. Here, I could see if it works just as great moving as it did stationary on paper. If not, this was the opportunity for me to cut scenes before animation.

Animation

For the animation, I used the animatic as a base. I traced over each frame individually in Adobe Illustrator. Then I brought the frames into After Effects to sequence them and use simple squash and stretch techniques. It may not be the fastest method, but it allowed me to accomplish the look I was aiming for with the characters.

Thesis Exhibition