Fun With Babies

In the month that has passed since the degree show I’ve set myself a handful of personal-growth projects that just haven’t been panning out. My endeavours to properly clean my apartment see me re-organising my crap just enough to make the place even more messy before I lose interest altogether. My attempts to lose weight are at odds with an alarmingly renewed fondness for sugary snacks and sitting still. My plan to give my imploded lovelife a shot in the arm is stymied by a sort of asexual indifference when it comes to pretty much every woman I know. Which I’m sure to them comes as something of a tremendous relief.
So, I’m untidy, overweight and single. Time to retreat once again to the world of cartoons!
While I return to the non-riveting world of freelance post-production, I figure it’s best to keep some more fun projects on the boil that will at best see some payoff and at worst keep me occupied.
The first on my list is a short film for the annual competition ‘Depict’, which challenges film-makers and animators to come up with a 90-second story. This is good in terms of labour but tricky in terms of coming up with a concept. Without going into too much detail, mine is essentially a projection of the way I’m feeling about myself, my place in the animation industry and in the world at large. My intention is for it to have a ‘big-sea-little-fish’ relatability to those who are (or have been) in a similar position, life-wise and career-wise.
Here’s some visuals for the main character design:My initial plan is for it to be 2D animation, with a rushed, ‘pencil test’ aesthetic, but if there’s time I’d like to have said animation merge with cutout/stopmotion to give it a bit more depth. Here’s a hurried test animation I threw together as a pitch for my photographer friend Helen Shaw to try and get her on board. As you can probably determine from the footage, I’ll need all the help I can get.