fears

Fears are visible as constant companions of their owners. The creatures can make people’s lives more difficult, but they can also be very useful.

A graduation film made at Vancouver Film School, 3.5 months of production, my first film.

2 mins | Canada | 2015
production: Vancouver Film School
direction, animation: Nata Metlukh
sound: Matthew Thomas

process

First I did a topic research, brainstorming and sketching down ideas about fears – what they can do to people and how they can interact with them.

A story about a fearless guy coming to a big city began to take its shape (in the very first version the guy even has died because of his carelessness).

character design

first pass, to explore the colors and shapes

colors

My favorite part — color exploration. To me colors are very important for visual appeal, and I spent a lot of time on color blocking and color correction.

animation

The most elaborate part — animation. I animated characters in Animate, and textures in Photoshop frame-by-frame, keeping the rough-clean look.

clean and colored, with fixed jittering caused by a camera move

references

I’m a big fan of references, I record people and objects on phone if there is any complicated movement to be animated.

For a swinging bus shot, first I found a paper model of a real NY bus, printed and glued it. Then roughed out the key positions, cleaned and colored everything, adding bg and fx.