Portland Design Week - Portland Animation Festival
Our prompt this year at the PDX Animation Festival was this, a circle in the middle of the screen. We had to start with a circle and title our films with one word. Easy enough, right? Well these were all going to be screened in Portland in front of an audience, a bucket list item for me. Also, I am very competitive and my friend, Patrick had won the previous two years. He told me he was going to not enter this year, but that I should and I wanted to make him proud.
The writing and storyboarding began and the concept started to take place. The idea of a Hole, started to form and the ideas of what it could represent started to get my wheels turning. Could it be everything you have done? All of the potential hope in the future? All of the feelings? These simple storyboards tell a great story all by themselves, with interesting framing and compositions, this surely would be a challenge to animate into a great 2 minutes story.
I needed to develop a modern style of character, away from my normal character. I landed on the one on the left for the main protagonist.
… and of course, an animatic was created to help me animate to a VO that I purchased on Fivver… for $50!
The event
The final video is something I’m extremely proud of. It was a hard time in my life and I let film help me through it. I also created a compelling story that pushed my boundaries. And oh yeah, I checked that box of having a film screened… and I took my mom to see it :)
A day or so later, I was informed that my film was the fan favorite. There are many films and animators that deserved this, I was fortunate enough to be picked as the winner. I have nothing to really show for it but a tweet and my video that will forever be mine.