Short Film: Head Over Heels by Frank Abney

Animation Mentor:

How did you come up with the concept for your short film?

Frank Abney:

I wanted to do a simple love story with a couple of general themes: “be yourself” and “there’s someone out there for all of us.” Everything else just fell into place with the help of my Class 5 Mentor, Nick Bruno.

Animation Mentor:

What important lessons did you learn from making your short film?

Frank Abney:

The important lessons I learned were:

• Plan as much as you can. Animation Mentor has a pre-production class, but you need to do more than what’s asked in order to finish your film on time. Plan ahead for all of the extra things that can come up (easier said than done, I know).
• Get as much feedback as you can. Your ideas may make sense to you, but may not translate to a greater audience. In our careers as animators, we’re creating content for an audience, so they should understand what we’re trying to communicate.
• Manage your time. A lot of us have other things going on in our lives, and some have families. Try to always make time, whether it involves working at 6 a.m. before everyone else is awake or working through lunch.
• Keep your ideas simple. It’s a SHORT film. I had a lot of ideas running through my head, but it was just adding minutes and minutes of animation. Just try to think of a simple idea; a conflict and a resolution.

Animation Mentor:

What was the best piece of advice you received from your mentor or your peers?

Frank Abney:

I’d say the best advice I received is not to forget to take breaks and step away from the computer!

Animation Mentor:

What were the steps in your planning process?

Frank Abney:

• Pitch the idea in writing
• Create storyboards of the action
• Translate the storyboards into 3D for layout
• Go into rough blocking
• Animate away (and get feedback!)

Animation Mentor:

Do you mind sharing some of the pre-production work with us with a little explanation of what we’re looking at?

Frank Abney:

Story pitch

This is my story pitch for my mentor, and its purpose is to communicate what the film is about.

Animatic

This is my animatic, which is basically my storyboards timed out to show the overall timing of my film. It demonstrates an idea of what I want to do with the camera.

Layout

Now the film has been translated into 3D. This is the basic layout, which communicates my 2D storyboards into Maya and further refines the timing and pace of the story.

Rough passes

Here’s my rough pass of blocking, which starts to add in basic poses to push the story along. At this stage, there’s still a lot to be done to bring the film to a point that I’d like it to be.

Final render

This is the final render of the film. There is still a lot to be done to polish everything, but I think this communicates my story effectively.

Animation Mentor:

What obstacles, if any, did you experience during the creation of your short film? How did you work your way around them?

Frank Abney:

I encountered a lot of obstacles, but the most challenging obstacle was time. I worked around this by trying to work quickly and efficiently. That’s where the planning came in, or simply just knowing what I wanted to do and how I could do it. There were days when I took a break from animation and focused on other areas of my film so that I wouldn’t get burnt out.

Animation Mentor:

How did Animation Mentor help you create your short film?

Frank Abney:

Animation Mentor helped me create my film by providing industry professionals and hundreds of students to provide me with feedback on what was working in the film and what wasn’t working. Plus, the existing work from past Animation Mentor graduates inspired me to want to create great stuff!

Animation Mentor:

What advice do you have for other students who haven’t started their short film yet?

Frank Abney:

The best advice I can provide is to pay attention to life (your experiences and what goes on around you). Those are the key things you’ll grab from when you create your film. Also, it’s a good idea to watch a lot of films. Dissect your favorite films and try to figure out what caused you to connect with them so much. Try to think of reasons why they became your favorite films. You may not get into all of those details with a 30 second short film, but you could.