Animation and Sound Development for a short animated Film

Our client was an emerging talent film maker who wanted to scope out his vision down to the animation pipeline and bring his film to life. While the synopsis was short, the script was very particular about details that would either foreshadow future events or would be easter eggs into the personal life of the writer themselves.

Our team was running on a very tight deadline, especially with the length of the storyboard and the amount of attention and care certain scenes demanded for us on a technical and emotional level. So our team had to juggle various projects and employ dynamic project schedules.

As per our expertise, we decided to use TVPaint Animation for our software of choice, with Photoshop used for key storyboarding, and often for even quicker brainstorming; classic pencil and paper.

The story follows the story of a young boy who is transported to another world, where the only means of escape is to confront the personal hell within them.

Inspired by Dante's Inferno, the client's tone of story was aimed towards a balance of simplistic designs, but very organic, irking visuals contrasted by moments of serenity.

They emphasized a sense of being trapped and utterly lost, the main character isn’t in a state of wonder being transported to an alternative world, rather his face is always set to confusion and anxiety, the moment he steps in; similar to a Silent Hill-esque story.

However the color palette was to be kept minimal, where hues were instead used to convey moods instead of textures and lighting. The sound engineering was also done originally by crafting unique sounds together in Reaper, with post production done inside Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Our team developed the first and final iterations of character designs. We were tasked to capture the mood of each character through simply body language and clean silhouettes.

The first half of the movie/storyboards center on more dynamic, birds eye view and low-dutch angle shots, specifically to create a power imbalance between the state of the main character, whose facial expressions easily convey his discomfort, and the size of the “antagonist” golem as well as the indifferent residents of this world.

The rules of the other world are based in surrealism and instead of keeping visuals as bizarre just for the sake of it, we wanted to incorporate more movement and interaction with the world, such as the unexplained inhabitants of the grasslands and the sun that transforms into a beating heart, being the anchor that reflects the ticking time bomb of the world.

Meanwhile, the second half of the film focused more on quite, close shots with hints of subtlety, as well as graphic horror on scenes that were reflective of the writer’s emotions and experiences. The same push and pull tempo couldn't be kept the same way the first act was organised, because we felt the author was not providing enough breathing room for his audience to settle with the protagonist's feelings. Therefore, we consulted the author to administer a switch in pace in order to improve the pace of the story.

If the story had too many moments of action and conflict, it would've ended up as a shock show - which may be how the author must truly feel them - but we believe that better storytelling is best met with compromises that respect the audience's position as observers, allowing them to absorb events at their own pace.

We did not want to shy away from the vision of the author, instead, we were committed to doubling down on their request and animate more shocking frames with a heavy sound design to follow, audio engineering various unique sounds from custom foleys and recordings, experimenting with sound mixing and layering using Reaper and FLStudio.

As visual storytellers, we were keen on digging deep into the experiences of the author, having multiple conversations for stories and emotions to flow easily so that we could capture the essence of a world where others may relate as much as the author did.

We made sure to experiment with a variety of shot compositions, angles and facial animated expressions in order to craft not only the essence in the moment, but also the themes overarching the whole story; one of complex bitter-sweet mixed feelings between a father and a son.

The film was a creative hit amongst the online audience, while it could not receive a live screening at the time due to COVID, it was met with critical acclaim especially from professional animated studios such as Puffball Studio and Oscar Award Winner, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy.