#cycleds

[thecycleanimation]

Director’s statement (SHORT)

The Cycle is the story of a mysterious giant creature who nurtures an unhealthy berry back to health but things do not go as expected. My animations are often inspired by food and have an unfortunate ending so my focus was to make it humorous but still dark.

[thecycleanimation]

Director’s statement (LONG)

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”.

In many of my films or storyboard ideas produced at MHSoC , the motivation is to find a way to make the film humorous despite having an unfortunate ending. The ideas usually come through brainstorming random situations associated with food.