I made a short film this year! \o/
https://vimeo.com/897307551
Pass: what is Val? (one word, no caps, no plural)

It’s based on the characters from Knives In Your Eyes. A little write up about my goals and thoughts on this project below.

I had wanted to see if I could still make a film after having a stroke. I haven’t made a film since 2014, so it felt like I was dusting off cobwebs for the first few months haha.

I’m an animator at my day job, so I didn’t want to focus on the animation at all. Instead, I wanted to put all my energy into all the other steps of making a film (script, storyboard, layout, backgrounds, fx, compositing, etc), since I’m far less proficient at those things.

I wanted to explore Hunter’s fears, mainly their fear of becoming inhuman and of being seen. I love the idea that Dream and Nightmare see the dreams that they’re eating, and thought that Hunter’s conflicting desires surrounding Val would be a great opportunity to see them feed off a single dream.

I lengthily blogged about my technical goals and process elsewhere so I won’t write it all again here, but I hope the ‘Val is intensely unsettling, and Hunter experiences what they think is the worst case scenario but is still somehow Into It’ vibes comes across ok. I Am Cringe But I Am Free! :D

The cool thing is, I can already spot the areas that need improvement and know exactly how I’d go about making those changes, so I feel that overall my critical observation skills have leveled up a lot :D I’m really proud of myself!

If anyone is curious about software: boards were done in Storyboarder, backgrounds in Clip Studio Paint, and anim/fx/comp in Harmony.