For this assignment, we were tasked with conceptualising and developing our own short film which showcases our unique artistic visions and skillsets. This is the big project that I, and I’m sure many others, have been eagerly anticipating after developing our skills during the past 3 years of the course.
This will be a documentation of my own personal progress for the creation of my Final Year Short Film called “Beyond”.
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Ideation & Conceptualisation
Before entering my Final Year, sometime after our trip to the Dublin Animation Film Festival in 2022, I drafted up a concept that was partially inspired by some of the Short Films I had the privilege to view that day.
I particularly latched on to the idea of a Sci-fi/Slice of Life story which would feature both the magic of otherworldly beings while also grounding the characters in a charming and believable location to their development.
With the idea of it being animated in mind, I took inspiration from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon to conceptualise designs that had strong and defined shape language, which I believed would aid me in the potential production future of this concept.
For the design of the human character, there was not much else that I was directly inspired by when drawing them, but for the robot character, I had a couple of different inspirations for their design. In particular, I was inspired by 2000s media such as the video game “Sonic Adventure 2”, the Pixar animated movie “Wall-E” and the animated TV shows “My Life As A Teenage Robot” and “Robotboy”.
While the concept of smaller cat-like ears was explored, I held an affinity for the bigger rabbit-like ears that were inspired by the Hero Chaos Chao from “Sonic Adventure 2”. Alongside this, the colour palette and sleek round shapes were directly inspired by Eve from “Wall-E”, but which were also design aspects that matched with the Chao as well.
There was also a concept drafted for a small companion for the robot character, which likely would’ve been built by them so they wouldn’t be lonely, but I decided early on to not pursue this concept so as to overcomplicate story development in the future.
Having drafted this initial concept over a year before I planned to go into Final Year, I had plenty of free time to let the idea ruminate while considering any other options that came to my mind. But while still on the high of imagining what this concept could turn into, I further delved into any artistic inspirations that spoke to me.
Over the summer of 2022, I had the idea of using this pre-existing art template I had found, made by fox-orion and posted online for anyone to create a simple collage of inspirations for any type of project. I used this template to group together reference images from Cartoon Saloon movies such as “Wolfwalkers” and “Song of the Sea”, not just for character design, but also for backgrounds, camera angles and colour palettes.
Another inspiration that I compiled with this template was the independent artist known as @_sanji7 or Sanji Seo online, whose fanwork of Kiki and Jiji from “Kiki’s Delivery Service” immediately stood out to me when I found it on Pinterest.
I particularly loved the loose textured linework along with their dynamic poses and charming facial expressions, and so I wanted to look further into their work to more closely observe the unique quirks of their art style. I also came across some of their full illustrations, which were clearly composed with strong yet readable lighting and integrated the characters into their environments very well.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/PastelPlushie64/beyond-short-film-inspo-board/
After this, I continued adding photos to the Pinterest board I had created for my Final Year project, especially ones that I felt could affect the art style and design of the final product. Otherwise, I spent the next lot of months focused on other work, until I found some more time to conceptualise in February of 2023.
Now, just before I had attended the DAFF in 2022, an indie music artist known as Derivakat has recently released a new original song called “Lost in Space”. As I had conceptualised these characters, I happened to connect them to the lyrics of this song due to the Sci-fi/Slice of Life similarities. I felt that the lyrics had space for an overlapping story that featured a human and a being from the stars developing a transcendental bond that allowed them to be happy together no matter where in the galaxy they were.
It was really this song that helped in solidifying this fundamental dynamic between these conceptually cool Sci-fi tropes and the baseline emotional bond that these two characters create together. And so the two were nigh impossible to separate from an early point in conceptualisation.
With that addressed now, during February and March of 2023, I was able to further explore with the designs of the two main characters. With this, I also gave these characters their names, deciding to name the human character “Aoife” and the Robot character “Phoebus”.
For Aoife, I wanted to give her a notably Irish name, and I felt that the name fit her bright and approachable face. I also tried out a couple of different outfits for her.
The cool colours and isolated posing of the second design in particular really struck a chord with me, and along with the warmer colours and more open posing of the first design, I felt like a story was being told just by those outfits and the character’s demeanour.
Which then gave me the idea of fully integrating that idea into Aoife’s character development, to make her a character who goes from isolated and alone, to someone who better appreciates the world around her thanks to some outside input. For my own personal use, I labelled these designs “Autumn” and “Winter” respectively, with the intent to try out a Spring or Summer themed design later.
And as for Phoebus, I had had an interest in naming them after a celestial body, with which many are named after Greek gods. I eventually came across the name as an epithet of Apollo, and there was just something about it that felt like it fit the bright and bubbly design I had created. It just so happens that the meaning of the name is “Bright/Pure” as well!
Alongside this though, I also thought it might be an cool idea to replace some of the letters in their name with numbers to further emphasise their robotic existence. And while I tried this with multiple Greek gods’ names, I just so happened to be happy with how PH03BU5 looked after this process, and ultimately went with it.
As for their design, I mainly stuck with the ideas I had initially conceptualised, with the only element of note being my processing of how I’d draw their large ears, which I hadn’t fully figured out initially.
I also personally drew up an idea for a human form that, while wasn’t planned to feature in the Short Film at all, was a fun exercise in translating the key design traits and silhouette of the original design over. This actually helped me better understand PH03BU5’S body type by imagining it like a romper!
Also during this time, I had wanted to try and design a logo for this project, which I had decided to call “Beyond” to both reference the vast expanse of Space while also expressing the characters’ bond went beyond what they thought possible.
I then went searching for a font that was angular and quirky to help add to the Sci-fi of my story, and soon came across a font called “Kikakana IO Bold” which ended up fitting very closely to what I had wanted.
After typing the title, I decided to use the transform tool to slant the font in a way similar to the classic text opening from “Star Wars”, and then erased some parts to make it seem like the title had scan lines much like with PH03BU5’S screen. As a final touch, I added some chromatic aberration to give some extra colour to the currently plain white text and further give it a technological quality.
In my later iteration of the logo, I added a faint silhouette of Aoife’s ponytail and PH03BU5’S ears overlapping each other behind the text and an added flair that could be included or removed when needed.
As a final test of what I had currently developed for my Final Year Short Film concept before getting into the Summer of 2023, I had the inspiration to create a full illustration that would feature Aoife and PH03BU5 reaching out to each other while floating in space.
While I was never planning for the two to go into space in the final Short Film, I thought it would be an evocative image worth creating to see how everything I had created up to this point looked when refined.
The main thing I was able to solidify with this illustration was the brush I wanted to use for the lineart. In my art program of choice, IbisPaint X, I was able to create a custom brush which had a unique textured look to it that will go on to be a defining trait of the final art style of this project.
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Research & Techniques:
In tandem with the pre-production work done during the timeframe of my Final Year, we were encouraged to research into different techniques that are used within the industry and search for advice from industry professionals.
As mentioned previously, I have been heavily inspired by the artistry of Cartoon Saloon, and went on to search for character sheets, concept art and rough animation from the production of “WolfWalkers” to further analyse for my own project.
For example, in the character sheets, they had very defined rules for the characters’ silhouettes and how to use shape language to convey the right intentions for the characters. Even if I don’t have mine directly written down, as I have drawn my characters more, I have gained an intuition for how to draw them at certain angles to maintain the shape language instilled in their base designs.
Another key inspiration for this whole project that I have yet to mention is the 2019 music video for the song “Starlight Brigade” by TWRP ft. Dan Avidan. From the moment I first watched it all those years ago, I was enamoured by the level of detail in all aspects of the production, and became even more inspired by the nature of the animation studio’s circumstances.
Indie animation studio “Knights of the Light Table” is Texas-based, but also hires talent from around the world by way of online group chats and the perks of sharing files through Toon Boom Harmony. And it was the featuring of Ireland-based artists Michael Doig & India Swift that allowed a younger me to believe that I do have a chance in this industry to be able to make the things that I love.
While the heights of their quality is something I am highly unlikely to match, there are many similarities in premise between “Starlight Brigade” and “Beyond”, least of which being the not so subtle shot references and overall project concept of an animated Sci-if music video telling its own story alongside the lyrics of the song.
As I have decided to lead “Beyond” as a solo project, the question of exactly how much can one person reasonably create in the timeframe given for this assignment is of the utmost importance to answer.
Throughout this conceptualising process, I wanted above all else, to make sure that I didn’t get over ambitious and put too much work onto my plate. And one of the key ways that I had initially planned to do so is by making use of Limited Animation.
Limited Animation as a concept has been used for many reasons, but one of the easiest to give an example of is the TV creations of Hanna-Barbera during the 1960s, which saw now classic properties such as The Flintstones and Scooby Doo animated very minimally while reusing already made assets as much as possible.
If I were to set any scale or scope to this project that could keep my ambitions in check and ideally produce a clean final product, the pathway of Limited Animation felt like the right way to go for me.
But I did have another, more specific inspiration to look towards for this endeavour as well, in the form of independent Artist and Animator SAD-ist. They started gaining large traction online due to their emotionally engaging animatics and animations inspired by the DreamSMP Minecraft roleplay server, and already explained clearly by fellow Animator and YouTuber Ethan Becker, SAD-ist has multiple tricks up their sleeve for attaining the quality of production that they currently have now.
One of those tricks involved the modern way in which shots transitioned, much like how YouTube vloggers would pan different shots together and cut on the action. Another of their tricks included their use of blur and focus, not just for added depth in a static environment, but also for moving objects going in and out of focus from the camera’s POV.
But the final trick, and the one most important here, is how SAD-ist uses a technique Becker dubbed as “Two Pose Motion”. This would involve having two distinct poses that are planned to connect with each other in motion, but will instead of inbetweening from one pose to another, you would instead only add slightly adjusted poses that ease in and out between the two keyframes.
This would give very snappy movement that falls in time with the music used in the videos while also minimising the amount of labour put into the actual animating process. Even beyond this project, I would like to practice this technique further myself to help sharpen my skills and hopefully quicken the pace at which I do my own personal animated projects.
During this research process, I found multiple industry professionals who went out of their way to give detailed advice about their areas of expertise in easily accessible ways. The first that I came across were storyboard artists Sergio Paz and Andy Cung, who each held their own hour-long seminars online for viewers to listen to and be able to ask questions about their processes.
In particular, Cung had held a 3 hour long presentation where he went over the concept of “The Umbrella Method”, in which the overarching story is broken down into smaller, more digestible chunks to be worked on while keeping in mind the overall purpose of each sequence.
Another industry professional who I gained invaluable advice from was Dong Chang, a freelance animator from Canada who posts densely informative videos on art and animation on his YouTube channel.
In particular, I took a lot away from his videos about layout and how to place a character into an environment, and while there is still a lot I don’t quite understand how to do, I plan to go back through his videos and search more into layout in the future.
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Pre-Production
During the Summer of 2023, I had heard about an up and coming iPad animation app called ToonSquid, and after watching a few videos on the official YouTube channel, I decided to download and try it out.
In particular, I was quite curious about its Vector properties, but I ended up getting something completely different out of it.
I planned to do a small test animation featuring Aoife to see if I would have any luck replicating the style I had conceptualised a few months back. I was mostly worried about the lineart, as the custom brush I created in IbisPaint couldn’t be transferred to any other programs, and so I would have to try and replicate it instead.
In my current animation program, RoughAnimator, it might not have been impossible to recreate the brush, but it looked like it would be very 50/50. On the other hand, it only took me around 10-15 minutes to create a whole new brush on ToonSquid that very closely resembled the IbisPaint brush in its textured quality. I was also able to add a stabilisation feature onto the brush to make the act of doing all of the lineart a much smoother process overall.
This completely reinvigorated me to work on the test animation, and in the span of around 1-2 weeks, I created this 5 second animation that I was very satisfied with! All of the other features provided by ToonSquid were very helpful as well, such as clipping layers and layer folders, which were a welcomed addition to see in an animation app for iPad. I am definitely inclined to work with ToonSquid more for my future animation work, going off of the experience I had with this little snippet of animation practice.
The movements were a lot smoother than I was planning for the final product, but for a short test, I was willing to see how far I could go and in what timeframe. This only reinforced to me how important the Limited Animation principle would be for me and this project going forward.
As we moved into the academic year and we pitched our concepts to the tutors, I took the time I had gained from working on my concept for over a year beforehand to clean up a few more design details.
First on the list was costuming, as I had already started on the idea months ago, and had yet to return to it. Alongside creating a Spring outfit for Aoife, I also needed a disguise for PH03BU5 so they could walk around without disturbing the peace, if you will.
For Aoife, I created a base body that I could work from in drawing her other outfits. Alongside finalising the Winter and Autumn outfits from earlier, I quickly gave her a base outfit that could be used for any potential circumstances that may arise.
For her Spring outfit, I wanted it to be light and pastel coloured while being a mix of chic but comfy, hopefully helping it to stand out against the moodiness and childishness of the Winter outfit and the more mature and subdued energy of the Autumn outfit.
As a bonus for myself, I then took the chance to draw up an extra outfit directly inspired by the anime adaptation of The PowerPuff Girls, which had been a much lighter inspiration that shows up a couple of times on my Pinterest board. This would not be an outfit used in the final product, but was still nice to include as a way to get into the right headspace for the project.
And for PH03BU5, I had initially planned to give them a long yellow raincoat, but I eventually settled on this bulkier and fluffier option to add to the absurdity of how Aoife’s coat fits them.
Moving on from there, after one of my chats with the tutors, I realised that I was starting to disconnect from my characters’ personalities and decided that expression sheets would be a good way to better define who they are.
I drew up PH03BU5’S expressions first, and referencing many different kinds of robots who have LED screens for faces. Particularly those from Japan had a large range of emotions and had the same friendly and charming vibes I wanted to show off with PH03BU5.
I really love how all of the expressions turned out, with PH03BU5’S big eyes and cutesy design, I wanted to make sure that their range of expressions could really show off their bright and honest demeanour.
The third row in particular were experiments to see how far I could go with the LED screen feature and try out more emoticon-styled expressions.
And for Aoife’s expressions, I wanted to strike the right balance between expressive and grounded, as compared to PH03BU5, she is a bit more reserved and down to earth.
Also compared to PH03BU5, I paid extra attention to squash and stretch for Aoife’s expressions to make sure they appeared more natural and organic. This includes puffing her cheeks out while smiling, scrunching her nose in judgement and letting her jaw loosen for open mouthed expressions.
Throughout this whole process, I’ve drawn up a few things with Aoife and PH03BU5 which weren’t necessarily for the project itself, but I would be remiss not to at least include them here.
The first of these miscellaneous pieces shows Aoife and PH03BU5 on a really tiny canvas, at least, I would consider 375x375px to be quite small!
The next piece shows Aoife through different periods in her life, from childhood to teenager to young adult. And here’s a bit of a fun fact: the school uniforms depicted are actually based on my own from Primary and Secondary school.
This was another attempt to ground Aoife very specifically in Northern Ireland, but it was also more of a personal piece than anything relating to the final Short Film.
I at least had fun changing the body and facial proportions to better differentiate each stage of life (the younger they are, the closer their facial features are, which adds an element of youth and cuteness to the designs!)
Next up is a redraw of a well known anime meme, which doubly worked in universe for Aoife at the beginning of the story, and also in real life for how I was feeling at this point in development.
Everyone has to have their rough patches at some point if they’re working on something for long enough, so I tried my best to stay focused on what I needed to do to move on to production.
This final piece was a pleasantly self-indulgent thing to work on, as I just wanted to design some Christmas-themed outfits for Aoife and PH03BU5, and decided to treat it as if it were a postcard. I feel like even the personal works still add to the development of the characters and help to flesh out details that could be useful later on down the line.
Following what I had mentioned earlier about losing connection to my characters and who they were, I was given a chance to try and work some things out during the NI Screen Masterclass, which was held on campus during January of 2024.
Throughout the week, we had many industry guests take time out of their days to go over their disciplines and give us advice on how to get into the local industry.
It was through this that during one of those sessions, I decided that I would use my characters for an animation exercise to convey emotion. I felt it would be fitting to have them both laughing, having a shared experience while still conveying the emotions itself in two different ways unique to themselves.
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Production Schedule & Scope
By the time I was presenting my Pitch to the tutors in October, I already had a good amount of pre-production work completed, including some storyboard thumbnails and animatic works-in-progress. With all of this in mind, I was quite confident at the time that I could finish up pre-production within the month and move onto production sometime in November.
From there, I would hope to be into keyframes by December and use all the time I would have afterwards to keep up the pace for production. My pipeline, in particular, would feature working off the thumbnails to create the animatic, and then using my iPad to hand animate as much as I could.
A big reason that I conceptualised things so early on was because I wanted to get ahead of any potential crunch time on my part, and to hopefully allow an ambitious idea of mine to come to fruition.
And at first, this idea, while definitely ambitious, was still somewhat feasible if I was able to stay disciplined and keep on top of my work. But admittedly, this has always been a big struggle for me, even in my personal work, and so I didn’t wish to take on this challenge lightly.
Be that as it may, however, my progress did start to slip as the months went on, as I kept pushing off the storyboards due to not mentally being prepared to take them on. By the time we reached January, I had fallen behind my projected schedule, which was a cause for concern for the tutors.
This was on top of the fact that, after taking on very useful writing advice from an industry guest during the NI Screen Masterclass, I had a breakthrough on why I was disconnecting with the characters and their arcs.
I did not clearly define who my characters were at the start of and by the end of the Short Film, and by extension, there was very little visually that helped to reinforce that they were living breathing beings who could think for themselves and could be challenged by the narrative.
To fix this, I used a technique that the Industry Guest gave us, which was to clearly define three key traits of your characters in terms of the narrative being told: What do they want, Why are they not able to have it, and What is it that they really need?
When I applied this framework to Aoife and PH03BU5, I quickly realised why these two character journeys worked together so well.
PH03BUS longs for the freedom to explore on their own terms, and is willing to escape the system they’re trapped in just to get that, even if it means leaving that system intact. Aoife is so self conscious and anxious about how others perceive her that she can’t bring herself to interact with others, even though she wants to so badly.
Both of these characters are stuck in their own heads, but it’s when they first meet each other that they are able to start truly developing. Aoife can’t get what she wants for herself, but she is able to help out someone else with their wants. And when PH03BU5 recognises this, they are willing to stand tall for what they want instead of running away in fear.
The big problem that arose from this realisation, however, was that when I initially pitched my concept back at the start of the year, I had purposely omitted some crucial details of the story. In particular, the fact that there were always plans for an antagonist character who was also from PH03BU5’s world, and their purpose in the narrative was exactly what I was currently missing: an outside force that challenged the characters and their newfound bond.
I had never gotten around to solidifying anything about this antagonist character beyond that, and when we were advised to be rational about the workload we planned for, I thought it would be best to focus more on Aoife and PH03BU5 as a more achievable scope for the project.
But in the end, it just left me confused on where the project was going and why I even cared about it to begin with. And so while it was an undeniably drastic change, I was now planning to go from using half of the song for the Short Film, to using the full song as I had initially conceptualised it in my head. And after a lot of important discussions with the tutors about the new scope of the project, we were able to compromise on creating a full rough animatic for the now 3 minute Short Film instead of fully animating it.
I completely understood my tutors’ concerns about this sudden and drastic change, and I myself was also very worried about how this would work, but I also appreciate their ability to respect the vision I had for the project and work with me to make it viable for the assignment deadline. I am honestly very thankful for their advice, especially when it was blunt, because even though it may have seemed harsh, it helped a lot to ground me in reality and to realistically consider my choices from this point onwards.
And so from this point onwards, it was crunch time. I first needed to design this antagonist character, who I had planned to be a superior to PH03BU5 on their home planet before they escaped, but who now has to drag them back to keep the system in check.
I wanted to once again emphasise the shape language on their design, and decided to use mainly triangles to contrast PH03BU5’s teardrop ovals and Aoife’s rounded squares. I also tried out reversing the colours and contrast compared to PH03BU5, so now they have a dark coloured base with warm hot pink accents.
In keeping with the theme of mythological gods as inspiration for this civilisation’s names, I soon decided on the name Nox, based on the Roman goddess of the night, and adjusted it to leetspeak as N0X.
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Reflection
On reflecting on this project, I feel like I have made my fair share of mistakes. I wasn’t upfront with my full intentions for the project, and could’ve gained advice on it sooner if I had committed earlier on in the academic year. I also continually struggled to get myself to keep working, having struggled with executive dysfunction for a majority of my life, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s something that I do want to improve on and that there were big consequences for me directly because I couldn’t face up to this problem sooner.
To prepare for going into the industry, I want to research and figure out coping mechanisms that will help me to incrementally work on a project on a consistent basis, even when I’m in the throes of executive dysfunction and lack motivation. I wish to develop a more professional and structured system to accommodate for my weak spots, perhaps by keeping a physical calendar or journal to help to hold me accountable for my progress.
To look on the bright side though, I am still very passionate about this project. I would very much like to continue chipping away at this Short Film post university and maybe someday complete it to my ever high standards. And while that is likely a long way away into the future, I have other creative avenues I would like to try out with these characters, and I am happy that above all else, I was able to work on a project that I wholeheartedly cared about.
I especially enjoyed creating the concept art and designs for this project, and whenever I was able to do some animation, I learned something new from the process every time.
Alongside the tutors who were endlessly helpful and supportive throughout the academic year, I am also grateful to my fellow students, with whom I was able to become good friends with. There would be many times where we would bemoan our progress on our projects, but we would hype one another up and just enjoy each others’ company outside of university work. I am glad that alongside all of the studies and learning, I was also able to connect with so many skilled and like-minded individuals who are just as passionate about creating funny little cartoons as I am!
A lot could’ve been done better on this project, but I will never argue with the invaluable experiences I’ve been able to have throughout not just Final Year, but my 4 years on the Animation course as a whole. I can only hope to continue learning as I move on in my life, and to hopefully keep an open mind about the transience of my abilities and become more proactive in improving not just on my strong points, but my weak points as well.
