Everything put together in TV paint with colors and backgrounds  

Equipment/Softwares used

ADOBE SUITE ~ 300$ Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 Adobe After Effects CC 2015

AVID Pro Tools

TVPaint Animation

WACOM CINTIQ HD 13″ ~ 1300$

Estimation of the numbers of hours spent on tasks

Rough Animation  ~50-60 hours Clean up  ~20 hours Coloring   ~ 10 hours Sound Editing  ~ 12 hours Background Artworks  ~ 7-8 hours *very roughly estimated hours

Post-production services: 

Final Sound Mix by Tim Horlor Color Correction by myself.

Other services

The story of The Cycle is about an unhealthy berry who gets saved by a mysterious Giant. The Giant nurtures him back to health but his intentions are not as wonderful as they seem to be. The Cycle’s style is inspired by recent animated television series: it is an animated short with a simplistic design that is emotional but also whimsical. 

For the visuals, the process of making this animated short involved looking through different types of background that would work well with the character designs: at first, the backgrounds’ design looked more flat but were change into a more painterly look to give more depth. As an aesthetic choice, since the characters have a very simple style and color, they stand out more against the backgrounds. Although the film is designed to have an overall cute visual look, it plays with the expectations of the viewer in the second half and becomes a “darker” film.

The idea behind the film is to lead the viewer awry by making the audience think the creature is a “gentle giant”.

During the early storyboard and animatic development, the giant creature had less character: he originally did not comfort the berry before eating him and just walked away towards another bush after doing so. After some feedback, it was said to possibly raise a question in the audience of leaving things unresolved. In the final version, it was altered so that the berry’s unhappiness was resolved: the creature would pat him on the head to comfort him until the berry smiled again. 

Additionally, the final scenes also changed: instead of eating the berry right away after being comforted and having the creature looking around for its next victim, the creature would throw the berry in his hand with a lack of interest and then notice something in the distance: another bush with another sad berry. He will then finish the “job” by eating the berry but not without making the audience hear the berry’s scream one last time. 

Finally, instead of seeing the creature walk towards the other bush, we will hear his footsteps fading away to suggest that he is going to his next meal in the credits. These additional scenes are to give the audience a better view on the relationship of the two creatures and to make them think: “oh, maybe he isn’t going to eat him after all” while also making the final scenes seem like less of a rush of things happening all at once.