Fantaisie
"Fantaisie" is my senior thesis film, produced at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2016. It's the story of two sisters who escape a dinner party to go on adventures together in their imaginations. It is heavily inspired by my niece, Annabelle, to whom the film is dedicated. She is such a goofy kid, and she's always laughing and smiling, so it's often more fun to play games with her than talk to the adults at dinner parties. Her boundless imagination is so inspiring, which is why it takes center stage in this film.
Concepts and Storyboards
My first task on this film, way back in my Concept Development class, was to create storyboards to get down the basic story for the film. I had been thinking about doing this story as my senior thesis for a while, so at this point, it was just a matter of getting it out on paper. My first attempt was too long and too dry, and it probably would have been too much to finish anyway. I used Toon Boom's Storyboard Pro program to create this first animatic:
Also in my Concept Development class, I had to create a "Pitch Bible", which is a booklet of character designs and story concepts that give anybody who reads it the basic overview of the film. Here are some of the character designs and look development images I put into that booklet. There's also some extra concepts I created later for some of the side characters. Click on them to make them bigger.
 Close to final color and costume designs for Molly, the younger sister. She's the one more closely based on my niece. |  Close to final color and costume designs for Megan, the older sister. |
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 Final color and costume designs for the mom. |  Some tests with their final shapes to see how well they could pose. Some of this also helped to establish the sister's relationship. |
 |  I always knew the basic design for Molly would closely resemble my niece, with her favorite hairstyle and her least favorite outfit. The challenge was trying to make her animateable, so her shapes would be consistent for the entire film. |
 Some shape tests for Megan to make her animateable. |  Before I had decided on the look of my layouts, I did some painting concepts for Molly and Megan's spaceship. |
 This was a concept design for the girl's spaceship. |  |
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 This was a concept design for the strong alien. |  This was a concept design for the smart alien. |
 |  These were character and color concepts for the extras at the dinner party. They aren't on screen a lot, and they don't move as much, so I didn't have to focus as much on the "animateable" aspect of their designs. |
After some more tweaks that continued through the start of my Senior I class, here is my last storyboard pass before I moved into my keyframe animation:
Animation
In my Senior I class, I began the long and arduous process of animation. As a character animator, I wanted this part of my film to be the best. I was animating all the way up until about two weeks before the film was due, which was about a year in total. I started with keyframe animation. I cleaned up the poses from the storyboards, and I fleshed them out based on the final character designs, also adding clothes and hair. This was my first time animating in Toon Boom Harmony, as all my character animation classes had used Autodesk Maya. It was a bit of a learning curve, but I found that I could use Harmony just like I could use pencil and paper, so I quickly got the hang of the program. By the end of Senior I, I had a slightly tweaked story with most of my keyframe animation done, as well as some rough animation on some of the shorter shots, just to see how animation was going to work. This is where my film was by the end of Senior I in Spring 2015.
Throughout Senior II, I continued to work on animation, while also adding a rough scratch track to get a feel for the emotional beats that I wanted the music to hit. Unfortunately, I used music from Steven Universe, which was a mistake I was not prepared for. I ended up liking my temp track a little too much, which made it hard later on to change the music to music liscensed under Creative Commons. Steven Universe, of course, being a Cartoon Network television show, would have been nearly impossible to get music liscenses for. If I could go back, I would have picked Creative Commons music from the start. By the end of Senior II in Fall 2015, this is the work reel I had:
Layout and Clean-Up
I worked a little backwards in terms of layouts for my film, as I was holding out for a great illustrator at SCAD to help me create some beautiful environments for this imaginative world. In the end, however, I had to do them myself, so I was doing the layouts and clean-up simultaneously. I looked again to Steven Universe for inspiration, as I feel they have incredibly diverse and colorful backgrounds that still convey mood and story well. I was heavily inspired by their color palettes. These are some of the images from Steven Universe, as well as from other artists, that I used as inspiration for the art direction of the layouts. Click on the images to make them bigger.
 I used the color palette from this Steven Universe image for the entire dinner sequence. |  I like the way this illustrator stylized the landscape while still keeping highly detailed forms. I almost went with a more realistic approach to the layouts in my film. |
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 I used this image from Steven Universe as the color palette for the spy scene. I liked the rich purples. |  Again, I liked how the layout artists on this image from the Lion King stylized the trees while still maintaining their forms. |
 I never wanted the space images in the space sequence to be dark and black and boring. I always wanted them to have rich purples, blues, and pinks, like in this image from Steven Universe. |  I liked the complimentary contrast on this image from Gravity Falls. The bright oranges and yellows of the sunset contrasted with the purples and blues of the sand. It makes the image pop. |
 I liked the bright color palette in this image. In some drawings of the African landscape, there's more neutral brown and yellow colors to convey the dry landscape. But I always my film to be nice and bright, so this image really influenced the color palette of the safari sequence. |  I used this color palette from Steven Universe for the space sequence. I liked the neutral purples combined with the neon blues. |
 I used this image as the color palette from Steven Universe for the safari sequence. I liked the contrast of the yellow greens and the blue greens. |
After I found these amazing Steven Universe color palettes, it was fairly easy to choose which color should go where. However, because I had held out so long for a layout artist to come onto my film, I knew I didn't have enough time to paint all the layouts with extreme detail, as well as clean up 40-something shots, with titles, music, and sound. So, I decided to go with a more simplistic approach. All I did was sketch out the essentials that were needed in the scene to make it feel alive. - the kitchen cabinets, tile flooring, or wires and pipes in a spaceship. Then, all I did was vary the line quality to go from extremely thin to extremely thick. This added a sense of whimsy and a kind of fun-house vibe, and since it was so simple, I was able to do it quickly for all the shots while still getting everything else done on time. Here are some of my favorite layouts. Click on the images to make them bigger.
 Shot 01 Layout |  Shot 02 Layout |
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 Shot 06 Layout |  Shot 11 Layout |
 Shot 22 Layout |  Shot 23 Layout |
 Shot 32 Layout |  Shot 39 Layout |
 Shot 44 Layout |
Music, Sound, and Credits
In addition to trying to hold out for a layout artist, I was also holding out for a sound designer, but again, everyone was too busy. I also had some issues with the music my composer gave me, and since I was closing in on the deadline, I didn't think it was fair to have the composer completely redo their work. It was all a learning curve. I ended up doing the music and sound myself. I used a great website for Creative Commons music called freemusicarchive.org as well as audionectar.com. Since I don't intend to make any money off of my project, I was able to use the music liscensed under an Attribution and/or Non-Commercial Creative Commons Liscense. For sound, I used the amazing Sound Miner library at SCAD, which gave me all the sound effects I needed. I then edited the music and sound effects directly into Adobe Premiere, which was the editing software I'd been using for everything. It was a pretty simple set-up, but it got the job done. Afterwards, I put in some simple credits, along with a dedication to my niece, and then my film was finished!
My film premiered at the SCAD Gradution Showcase in early June 2016 to a wonderful audience response. My family was able to come and enjoy the moment with me, and after that two minutes and twenty-three seconds on the big screen, my film finally felt complete. The entire experience of producing a film was so much fun. I learned so much, and I intend to use my new knowledge going forward in my career. Thank you to everyone who supported me on this journey! It's been a blast!