Surface Tension
Graduation student animation film about A one-legged chicken escapes his abusive environment, believing his life is no longer worth living for. Before coming to his end, he gets given a second chance at life and faces a challenging journey of rebirth.
Rough Animations and VFX Animations
It is an honour to work on roughs and keyframing for the more complex shots of the film, including morphing sequences and 2D effect shots, which brought challenges and a rare learning opportunity to my skill sets. The effect style is inspired by "Children of the Sea" (2019) and it is one of the main inspirations when I animate and storyboard some of the scenes with a more abstract approach.
Finalised
Character Designs
Shape language is one of the main considerations designing the characters. The contrast between the spiky red evil rooster and the more rounded young chick and the sheep shows their respective personalities.
Designs of the characters are kept in a simple thin lineart style and flat cell shading, reducing the complexity of the drawing process for the characters.
Story Boarding
The scenes I story boarded are the 2 emotionally intense and heavy moment in the film. I wanted to incorporate some more abstract elements and effects into the scene, to represent the messy mind state of our protagonist.
Exploratory Sketches
Initial exploratory sketches of characters and environments. In the first few character sketches I experimented with more exaggerated shape language and pushing the character forms to a more graphical look. I also experienced with the degree of anthropomorphism of the characters, pushing the characters within the spectrum of being human and maintaining animal features.