2D Character Animator
Tea Talk is a 1 minute short film created for the 2018 Gyllyngdune Tea Festival. The film features a mixture of both rotoscoping and traditional 2D animation, based on interview footage from local members of the public.
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Tea Talk is the first short film I worked on, and I took on what I would now consider the role of director, and Rebecca Hardess produced. The film's concept was inspired by similar animated interview compilations, including Aardman's Creature Comforts series.
Art direction for the film was shared between myself and Carol Mau. I directed the style for the rotoscoped sections of the film, while Carol directed the traditionally animated sections. Between us we kept a consistent colour scheme in order to tie the film together.
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The style of the rotoscoping was inspired by minimalist stencil and papercut artwork, including the work of artists such as Banksy and Julene Harrison. I wanted to get three tones into the work in order to give more of an impression of tea staining.
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The pre-production time for this film was essentially negligible, so the art direction was not given much time for thought or development. If I were to revisit this concept I would like to further develop the idea of the tea stains, introducing varied opacities and textures into the design.
Animating for Tea Talk was an interesting experience, as I had not previously experimented with rotoscoping, so the advantages and pitfalls of working in this style were made clear along the way. The style was distinctive and appealing to the eye, but resulted in heavy boiling around some areas of the face if proper care was not taken. The join between hair and shoulders was particularly susceptible to this.
Initially, we had planned to produce the entire person in the stencil style for each frame, but after some discussion we instead opted to used a line drawn effect for the clothing. This greatly reduced production time and made the task much more feasible.
Tea Talk is finished and can be viewed online here!
