Breakfast Rescue
Presenting to you, Breakfast Rescue! A short sweet story about a little brother, Peter, who attempts to make breakfast in order to cheer up his older sister, Katie. I had the amazing opportunity to direct and write a two and a half minute short film and create it from scratch in ten weeks along side a team of twenty other students. From concept art, to sound design, to modeling and rigging, every aspect you see was created by this amazing team. Big thanks to the entire team that worked on this, it would not have been completed without every individual. Hope you all enjoy!
​
Scroll further to see the behind the scenes of some phases of the film and the work that I contributed in addition to directing!
Script, Storyboarding, & Animatic
Every short film starts with just an idea. That idea then turns into a full story, and then a working script is made. Here is our initial script and plan for Breakfast Rescue! Now, when creating an animated film, it is really important to plan and visualize this script with storyboards, which then are turned into a full animatic. As this process takes place and production begins, the script changes, and the final story begins to form.
Storyboards created by Christopher Chin, Jordan Milligan, Courtney Wishart, Connor Morrison, Isobel Miller, & Diego Collazo. Animatic edited together by Connor Morrison.
Concept Art - Pre Production
Layout
The planning of shots and getting the camera into the 3D space is a very important step. It takes the idea, and turns it into reality, seeing if readability is there. With the ten week deadline, we had a lot of elements still in the process of being made, such as character rigs, so our focus was mainly on setting up the camera to have the shots ready for our animators when the time came. 3D layout completed by myself, Hannah Spillers, & Jordan McMorris. Scene 1 Shots 1-6 created by me.
3D Animation
It meant a lot to me to be able to animate the final shot of the film, for it cultivated the entire drive of the story. It was a very difficult shot, for it contained two characters, some dialogue, and many changing constraints. However, the challenge excited me. As you can see, the final did change from the reference during the animation process, however, that's what comes with animation. Timing changes immensely from storyboards to animation, time constraint of deadlines, story needs, and much more. You have to be able to roll with the punches. For this shot specifically, I went with more of a straight forward animation strategy, rather than blocking the entire shot out. I love to feel the character as I go, while still referring to my reference.
Time to bring the story and characters to life with animation! These are the shots that I personally worked on. Being director came with a lot of responsibilities, however, I still wanted a hand in what I am most passionate about, breathing life into characters. Here you see the final renders, in addition to reference, blocking, spline, and polish phases.
