Birth Day ©2022

An animated story about Will, a Los Angeles artist that is pulled into a world he created, but has not finished. This was a student project for Story Xperiential, focused on learning storytelling and animation from current Pixar artists and story developers, through weekly live streams and online Q&A. To produce a reel in four weeks, I needed to create a large amount of art to bring into my production, and to explore story concepts. The primary tools used were Procreate on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, and Runway ML for development of reference images. Editing was done in Final Cut Pro (FCP) on a MacBook Air (M1). Pixar's films take an average of four years from initial spark to release date, so telling a story and creating a 17 minute film was a one month challenge. Actually many challenges. The nascent Artificial Intelligence tools being released for general use were very valuable for exploring art different styles used in this reel. "Environmentals" or the images and sounds the protagonist exists in are used as an antagonist. As the story arc progresses the art style grows from pencil sketches to colored pencils, water colors, matter "post cards from the field" images, to final images with added realism.The final gallery scene includes lighting design, sound design, and voice acting to create the environment for what happens next (watch the reel after the credits, there's one more thing). Several scenes in Act 3 were created with large panoramic images, one was over 16,000 pixels wide (by 500 pixels high). My large matte digital paintings were brought into FCP and the "camera" pans along the landscapes (dreamscapes) to illustrate Will's progress. Will and his spirits (played by a group of Monarch Butterflies) get through a long and challenging journey, arriving at a mountain top jungle, where the artist Will meets his muse. The conversation they have coalesces Will's life experience, giving him new awareness and focus. In a non-traditional move, I created a music video after the credits to suggest the moral of the story. We all bring different backgrounds to art, so the moral is left to each person to define for themselves. Note the color theme (blue and yellow/gold) brought through the reel, including on the LA art gallery I created from Frank Gehry inspiration. Matte images were inspired by Disney's "the 9 old men," Disney's Fantasia, and the brilliant matte paintings of William Samuel Cook "Peter" Ellenshaw. Runway ML was used to create the various art styles and to produce the large panoramic images that created the final scenes. Thank you to Runway ML for excellent customer support during the intense, four week production schedule.