2D Character Animator
Sunshine is a 4 minute short film directed by Gene McKechnie and produced by Penny Booth.
The film is a 2D animated fantasy adventure about finding your own autonomy and also fighting the sun.
Sunshine is one of the films I worked on in my final year of university, following it from script to animation. As soon as I saw the practise pitch, I knew I wanted to work on this film, as it deals with sensitive subjects in a surreal yet relatable manner, and deeply resonates with me on a personal level through this.
Concept art by Gene McKechnie.
While many plot elements were workshopped by the whole team, the Sunshine script was mostly written by the director, Gene. I acted as a writing consultant briefly when it was being finalised, mostly helping with small dialogue tweaks and suggestions on strengthening certain motifs within the film.
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Sunshine's art direction is still somewhat of a contentious subject. The film was originally pitched as a flat coloured traditional 2D film, with the idea that the main visual focus of the film would be on strong animation rather than art direction. However, our executive producer pushed us into exploring more avenues with regard to the film's final look.
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Early in the film's pre-production stages, I created a range of lighting concepts for scene 3, in which sunlight streams through a broken log.
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I worked together with Gene to try out some more experimental styles for the film using traditional art supplies such as alcohol markers and oil pastels. While the markers test is generally considered a very appealing style for the film, it has yet to be worked into a fully realised production process, either digitally or traditionally.
Getting our hands dirty with traditional art supplies.
My marker test. Animation by Carol Mau.
Unfortunately due to deadline crunches and the sudden change in working conditions due to COVID-19, the art direction for Sunshine has once again been put to the wayside in favour of other parts of production.
Sunshine's protagonist, Milo, was designed by Gene prior to the film pitches, and turnarounds were later finalised by Rob Strachan.
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As part of my work for Sunshine I provided feedback on the character models and produced some action poses for Milo. Milo's design did not come naturally to a lot of the animators, including myself, but with time and practise (and good reference sheets!) we picked it up.
I am currently working as a key artist for Sunshine, and will be moving onto inbetweening soon. So far I have keyed seven shots for the film, as well as producing a number of test animations for Milo's run cycle and the Sun's corona movement.
Working on Sunshine has really encouraged me to raise my standards, as the director Gene has high expectations as well as a contagious passion for this film. While COVID-19 has slowed production down, this has given us more time to spend on additional care and attention for the film, and I am very excited to see it fully realised.
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Sunshine's production is currently on pause as the team have had to prioritise paid work.