Ramping Up My Short Film Production · Issue #6 · 2022

Starting work on the animatic for my short film and more reflection on my creative journey

This is “The Inspired Animator”, a newsletter about my adventures in animation, illustration & the creative process! Discovering new tools, experimenting with them, talking about failed and proven workflows with occasional tutorials, or behind the scenes of my animations and techniques.

Dear Inspired Animators,

In this issue, I am going to be talking about the production of my newest animation short film and the struggles to get there in the first place. Little by little seems to be the answer to everything creative.

I decided to split this issue up into 2 separate issues. Because I also wanted to write something about the last product trailer I did for Levity, my newest showreel for 2022, and the product trailers for my own animation products! Instead, this issue focuses on the Short Film. Because it deserves the spotlight!

Let’s dive into it!

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Ramping up the Short Film Production

One of my main creative goals this year is to release at least one animated short film. A film that is longer than one minute, and tells a story. Most of my animations, up to this point, were really just loops, short jokes, experiments, and other scenes with no real story behind them, apart from the animation I did for my freelance clients.

I am inspired by Coleen Baik’s journaling of her journey to produce her short film Chamoe and want to do the same. Journal my progress. I really like her calm and collected style of telling her journey.

Often the creative journey is described like that. In fact, I know it from the design journey. A way of creating a well-designed product. It’s not a straight path, but a path of constant iteration and setbacks.

How the creative journey is often described

Looking back on my past posts of The Inspired Animator there is no coherent thread, yet. My creative journey feels a bit ADHD, I jump from topic to topic between weeks. Between building a passive income business of selling helpful products for animators, building things in 3D or VR, client work, illustration process, and more.

How the creative journey feels to me

It just feels like there are so many possibilities, and sometimes I want to follow them all. But I end up not really progressing in a meaningful way towards any of them.

To get some constant progress in an area, you need to set some boundaries for yourself and commit to working on a single project to its completion. Even if it’s just a minimal investment of time, if you continue to work on a project, you will eventually get further than procrastinating and waiting for when motivation strikes.

Everyone is excited at the beginning of a project. Motivation is high. Many things get done FAST. But at some point, every significant project will hit a roadblock.

If you just wait for the motivation to resolve it, you could wait forever. Because guess what? The longer you wait, the harder it gets to jump back into it. Which raises the resistance to continue even further. Resulting in the project landing on the unfinished project graveyard.

I committed now to work at least 1h per day on the animatic of my first short film with the working title “A Tale of Fat and Loss”.

About the Short Film

The story of that film was written during the pandemic by my partner. We were physically separated for about 8 months during the start of it, when she had to go back to the US and I was in Germany, with no possible ways to travel to each other due to lockdowns and border closures.

Back then we decided to write each other stories that the other had to illustrate. By the end, we would learn something about writing and illustrating short stories. That was the plan.

She wrote a story based on personal experiences dealing with body issues, the struggle and pressure to lose weight, and potential eating disorders that can result from it.

What came out was a short kafkaesque and macabre story. She envisioned the illustrations to be in a crude black and white style with some dark humor to them. And that is what I will try to go for in the style of the animation.

Working on the Animatic

Last time I shared some of my thumbnail storyboards.

At the moment I am working on finishing the animatic and I am about 50% done. Here is a short sneak peek of an early scene:

Here is how I am currently working on it:

First, we recorded her narration of the short story. I wanted her voice in there for two reasons:

1. It is her story and she can connect the most to it. It has to be told from an authentic voice.

2. I generally think she has a soothing narration voice and was complimented many times for it. Not even just from me. At one time even by Stanley Tucci himself! Not kidding. I would like her to get some exposure that way because she would love doing voice-over work!

Then I imported the sound file into RoughAnimator on my iPad and started slowly building the animatic. A couple of drawings at a time. First I tried to use Storyboarder, but ultimately I struggled with the UI and couldn’t get anything done within my first hour of work. So, I went back to my favorite hassle-free animation app.

Since then I’ve been slowly progressing towards 50%. A little at a time.

Hopefully in 2 weeks more time, I will be finished with the animatic and can start cutting it and figuring out the exact timing of things, before I can move on to animating actual scenes.

I might need to get more development done on the design of the characters and backgrounds as well. But I also might just jump in straight away and build it scene by scene.

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That’s a wrap, more updates on the short film will follow in two weeks. In between, I will write an update about the other things I have been working on. There is a lot!

Cheers!

PS: How is your creative journey going? Is it a straight path? Is it a spiral? An up and down? I would love to hear from you.