Three's A Crowd
Three’s A Crowd by Chloe Brown, graduate from Staffordshire University
Who?
I worked on the bulk of this film pretty much solo, though I credit the initial idea to Faye Wombwell, Adam Poole and Becky Burst. Jessica Goddard also helped to provide some sound effects, and Stuart Messinger aided me in making some much-needed revisions to the storyline in the early stages.
What?
Whilst taking a break from traversing a snowy wilderness one day, a monster named Biscuit allows her pup, Zombie, some time to play. Unfortunately she soon realises how bad an idea that was, as the adventurous little tyke runs off to explore a dangerous looking village.
Why?
The creatures featured in my animation are all characters of mine who I’ve been wanting to do something like this with for a while now. Initially they had nothing to do with each other, but it was suggested to me that I bring them all together, and I’m glad I did. They ended up working with each other really well, and they help to showcase some of my character design skills. That, and it was just fun being able to expand on them and make up a little world for them.
How?
All of the animation was done in Toon Boom Harmony 10, while the backgrounds and rig pieces were made in a combination of Paint Tool SAI and Adobe Photoshop CS6. The characters are mainly made up of lots of separate pieces, with parts like heads and legs having interchangeable pieces to allow for more variety in the movements. Once I finished all the scenes, I put them into Adobe After Effects to add a snowfall effect to them to add some atmosphere. The scenes were then put into iMovie HD and from there I added the sound effects and music.
Next Project?
In the future, I hope to work on some things to further expand on the characters’ world, which is inhabited by all kinds of strange creatures. I plan to start by fleshing out some backgrounds for Zombie, Biscuit and Tlun – primarily the former two to show how they found each other, since as is probably obvious, Zombie isn’t actually Biscuit’s biological child.
