Animation for the Internet, AKA I have to animate 4 minutes T~T

 Doing animation for the portfolio project comes with one big issue that is really difficult to ignore, TIME! For animation, I have to do 4 full minutes in the next month or so, I not only have to start production basically this week but also I have to look at other projects similar to mine to see what their little tricks here and there were to get something like this done in a short amount of time. For that, there is no better thing to look at but CalArts short Films and Internet Animation!

i drew a lil thing as the thumbnail!!!

Alright so first I wanted to show an example of a film that I think is a great example of working with limitations to meet a certain time requirement. Vewn is an animator who already graduated from CalArts and produces little short films like this one for her patreons. Her style is very loose and surreal yet still grounds itself and is easily readable.  This film was produced in about the same time as our portfolio project and is right at the 3 minute mark. While this isn't the time requirement I need, I have a couple tricks up my sleeve that will help me get there. Not only that, the pacing of this film is absolutely balls to the wall so I think I can take some time for some scenes to just slow down and it should all work out pretty well. This film uses very simplistic animation to achieve a very specific and deliberate look, meaning that less attention has to be paid to the quality of every single frame but the animation still remains very dynamic and active. This film serves as a great example of how to work with limitations while keeping a conscious art direction.

 

I'm not going to lie this next film is straight up fucking weird. "Temptation Stairway" is a short film produced for the internet video series ENA. It follows a set of recurring characters that show up in different scenarios, but besides that, this entire series is a lot of niche internet humor and post modern storytelling/antics combined into one really really weird acid trip, and that's what makes it so interesting. A lot of times, creators on the internet use these weird storytelling techniques to save themselves time and effort they otherwise would not have. This has almost become a convention of internet animation and not just a recurring theme. It is something we are even starting to see popping up in tv animation, with shows like Adult Swim's Smiling Friends exemplifying this with its short attention spawn pacing and overall lower quality animation. However, in both of these scenarios, this is still done deliberately. The whole point of the joke is that it looks like it's ripped out of a PS1 era videogame or out of a Newgrounds style animation. They both use their limitations to appeal to a certain look that their target audience will appreciate. While this might make these pieces a little alienating for some viewers, the goal of these works is not to attract the largest audience, rather it's to get a specific in group that will really appreciate all the little easter eggs, gags, and style differences that these pieces offer. Anyways, here is Temptation Stairway and also a clip from Smiling Friends just for reference. 

I'm going to talk about one more to wrap this up with a cute little bow. This one is another CalArts film from one of my favorite creators out there! Mobbele is another CalArts graduate working at Netflix animation. This little film is way closer to what I should be approaching in time, and while it doesn't use as many shortcuts as something like an ENA animation, something I take away from it is just how nice their compositions are to look at, both shape and contrast wise. I'll be keeping pieces of animation like these in mind as I go forward with the project, and I hope they will help me out when it comes to deciding my art direction and how I am going to pace my story. Anyways, here is "gone astray"!