Francine is proud she has not seen another artist better than her until she looks across the classroom. Her classmate, Remi’s artwork is just as good. Remi stares back shocked someone is as skilled as he is.They hastily grab a paper and sit back down. During the next half of class, they intensely focus on their drawings completely ignoring the assignment prompt. Francine draws her favorite headcanon ship and Remi draws his dragon fursona. With minutes to spare, they submit their assignment to the teacher. They both failed their assignment because they did not stick to the rubric and draw the fruit in the middle of the room.
Inspiration:
This film is based on a conversation I had with Francis Espiritu. We talked about how competitive we were growing up over being the best artist in our school. I imagined what if we met in middle school. Francine and Remi started as gender-swapped versions of ourselves, but throughout the production, I gave them the qualities of other kids I knew in middle school.
Frames from 3, 21, 23, and 46
Slide from my film pitch presentation. Contains the first sketch of my two main characters, Francine and Remi.
Character design sheets Francine and Remi
Francine is based off a mix of boy-ish middle school kids I knew when I was younger. I wanted to give her faded dyed hair and a black and red hoodie because she is going through her emo phase without having the money fully dive into it.
As for Remi, I wanted him to resemble how I saw myself as I kid, a nerd who tries to hard. He still has the bowl cut hair style his mom gave him growing up and he is too afraid to change it because he thinks he has to argue with his mom to change it.
Character Design sheets for Isaiah, Lisa, and Mr. Ed
Toonboom Harmony Rig Screenshots
The completion of this film is dedicated to how I learned to make/animate 2D rigs in 2D Advanced Animation and on my own time. If I did not have the confidence to use rigs, this production would be much more painful to animate with the frame by frame/hand drawn method of animation.
Layouts by Lauren Shee
Lauren volunteered to be my Assistant Layout Artist and significantly saved me time and stress. These are a few layouts they made with pngs of the storyboard/animatic.
Before giving Lauren a task, I created shots 19 and 46 as sample illustrations so we would understand how long it takes to make a layout and what the film will look like. We also used the lasso tool to block out elements in the background like the desks because it is quick and non-distracting to the animation.
Humor is the core of this film so my most important instruction was to have fun.
