The Moonlight Escape
Follow a boy and his owl through the forest as they sore through the trees in order to evade a flock of eyeball henchmen. A short film created by a team of twelve dedicated students at Ball State University. In the Spring of 2022, it was awarded Best Animation at the Frog Baby Film Festival.
01 CONCEPT ART
Before the senior film conditions were announced, I kept in mind what story I would like to tell. I began coming up with many different ideas but this one stood out due to the many possibilities I could think of when looking at it. A boy and his friendly giant owl was the most interesting idea for a senior film I could think of, so I kept it in mind for the future.
02 BEATBOARDS
The 2022 Animation class was told to come up with our own stories for our storyboarding finals in the Fall of 2020. The two conditions that were given was that it would have to be either comedic or action based, and be able to fit into 3 minutes or less.
I decided to make a quick action beatboard using the characters I had previously made. I kept in mind that it would have to be very short so there were only a few beats. My idea was one the of the two chosen to be made into full animations the following semester by the animation class as a whole.
03 STORYBOARD
During the Spring of 2021, my class began pre-production on our chosen senior film. We were given half the semester, eight weeks, to make a storyboard, character designs, and finalize the visual development. I was made the Story Lead and had three other people on the team.
We created a three minute storyboard in that time and I cleaned up some scenes before we started production, some of the designs were not finalized by this time. Before the production began, our team thought it would be best to cut the three minute film down to a minute and a half to give us the best possible chance of ensuring a quality short film.
04 ANIMATION
In the Ball State Animation program, the senior films have always been made using 3D animation. However, the program was shifted to accommodate social distancing and other Covid-19 regulations. Halfway through creating 3D models for the two main characters, we realized that making a 3D film on this scale would not be viable with the restrictions on us at the time. So our team of twelve students decided to do something completely different than previous senior films by having a mix of different 2D techniques.
Our visual development team created backgrounds in Photoshop, our character team animated the characters and antagonists in ToonBoom Harmony, then our director composed the animations and backgrounds in After Effects. I was on the character team, and spent most of the eight weeks animating the characters frame by frame. I also reviewed some of my classmates' work before they were colored in.
