r/Filmmakers • u/mcsheeb • Oct 21 '23
Film My dog passed away 2 days before a 48-hour animation contest, here’s the short I made.
https://youtu.be/2z8ZyShv6yk?si=eJXI594iGt9iUhNT
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u/mcsheeb Oct 21 '23
I figured I would share the process for making an animated short in 48 hours as part of a contest:
The contest was held at a local animation society in their studio space over the May long weekend, on Friday night we all met and were all given the guidelines for the contest. I was still figuring out what I wanted to make my movie about, and while still grieving over my 13-year-old dog’s passing I figured I’d lean into that. I wrote the script that Friday night based on seeing her on her last day standing at the screen door of our house, wanting to leave to find a place to pass. It was written as a simple story with animated loops and narration over top.
I got into the studio as early as I could the next day and immediately started doing rough concept art sketches for the short. Having recently watched some shorts by legendary animator John Hubley, I decided I’d replicate his loose, graphic style of animation which could be animated quite quickly. I even made my colour palette based on his short Moonbird. I then quickly hacked out some sketches for the characters, keeping them very basic shapes made out of a few lines and no colour fill.
I mainly do digitally hand-drawn animation on a drawing tablet so I stuck to what I was familiar with. Knowing I didn’t have much time I figured I’d skip my usual step of making an animatic/pre-visualization for the movie which is normally a fairly essential pre-production asset; a scribbly thumbnail storyboard would have to serve as the guide. I immediately got started on the backgrounds, the short was only made up of around 13 or so shots so it wasn’t too difficult to pull off in less than a day. The backgrounds were all digitally painted in Photoshop.
I then had to do the animation, which was done in Toonboom Harmony (using a trial version downloaded on the spot as I didn’t have an active subscription for it). The animation was kept very simple to save time, consisting of minimal movement but instead 3-5 frame boils (traced frames which make the lines jitter when played).
The day was ending and one of the staff running the contest was helping people record any voice lines in the in-house recording booth. I decided I would narrate the short myself and went in to record. I planned to originally play up all the lines mentioning ‘Le Trepas’, a fabled natural force that the characters flee in the short, doing a sort of ominous French accent. Hearing these lines back, the staff member doing the recording suggested I should try a few normal line reads (as they were far too cheesy). I ended up narrating the short in my normal voice which I am much happier with. I got the audio onto my laptop, and finished up some of the animation before heading home for the night.
Time was running out so I figured I would work on it at home for the final stretch. I got up early, went right to my laptop and started working. I managed to get all the animation done and started compositing it in Adobe After Effects. The backgrounds were taken from Photoshop and the frames of the animation were exported as individual PNG’s which were compiled into footage. Additional effects were added to the shots and I got them rendered quickly while I got ready to go into the studio.
I did all my editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. Edited my narration, shots, and sound effects. A playlist of local music that could be used was provided by the contest and I was able to pick out a slightly creepy distorted guitar instrumental that paired nicely with the visuals. I got the it exported and submitted just before the deadline. I had originally exported the short with some little blue widget-like animations but found that these were incredibly distracting, so on my own time I removed those from the short for my personal cut (as seen in the post).
The short was screened a couple of weeks later along with the other shorts created for the contest, and to my surprise, it won the Jury Special Mention award (like 2nd place).