A Special Gift

A while back we received a message from a primary school teacher in Italy. She enjoyed our short and shared it with her students, and the students gave us this very special gift.

This was so sweet and we were very grateful!

Taking A Look Back

In the week leading up to the Blockhead Festival we are sharing our project and its process with some fellow students to help get them excited about the festival itself but also to hopefully inspire others to make animated projects of their own. So we thought it'd be a good idea to share some of the pre production work on our blog as well.

So here's the story behind the story.

We tried many different versions of the story until we settled on one that we thought best delivered the message we wanted, which was to recognize the similar emotions between us and the whales to make others aware that whales do not belong in captivity.

We settled on a idea of a story that focused more on the experience and relationship a child would have when first meeting the captive whale. From there we got creative. We even wrote out an entire script with dialogue. We did this in order to figure out our story but before we knew it we were planning shots and actions of the characters that could tell our story without it. Which from the beginning we did not want to have dialogue, we really wanted the emotions to speak for themselves.  

This comp of boards is an early state of the final story and has storyboards created by all three of us. This goes to show how invested all three of us members were in the creation of the storyline and the boarding process.

From there we took our boards and began planning the motion in each shot in the most basic sense. Using arrows we planned were the focus or most movement was going to be. Wether it was a camera move or animated character we wanted the viewers eye to follow a consistent path from shot to shot. This lead to more and more revisions and even leading into the production revisions on shots were still being made.

Although we landed on what we felt was a good base of the story that was much shorter and concise than previous boards. With the story figured out we began designing and we delegating that amongst the group members as well.Fishy Thom, focused on the girl's design. 

Joey Cheers designed the whale

Teon Simmons designed the backgrounds.

We've Finished!

We have completed production of this short and we are so excited to share it with you all, but before we share it online, we are featuring it at our school's annual film festival, Blockhead. The event is on Thursday, October 23rd at 7pm. At St Anthony Main Theater in Minneapolis.

This event is open to the public so if you are in the area and want to support us and other Ai students please come see our work and help us celebrate another year of great work created.

Process of the Painted Backgrounds

We used 3D environments to set up our stadium scene. 

Here we can show you the painted WIPs.

 Painted backgrounds update!

Backgrounds By: Teon Simmons

Pencil Tests

We are continuing our animation process and have a few pencil tests to share!

Girl Animation By: Fish Thom | Whale Animatoin By: Joey Cheers | Backgrounds By: Teon Simmons

Thanks for looking!

Continue to follow our blog to see more progress work!

Production Begins!

This past week we've begun to produce some animations! Check it out!

Girl Animation By: Fish Thom | Whale Animatoin By: Joey Cheers | Backgrounds By: Teon Simmons

Thanks for looking!
Continue to follow our blog to see more progress work!

Style Frames

These style frames are our proof of concept and what we as a team

 hope to accomplish in the final animation.

Thanks for checking out our team's blog!