The Gum - 15 Second Film
2D Traditional Animation
15 seconds
2024 Pencil and Watercolours on paper
Shot on a Downshooter using DragonFrame
UCLA MFA Animation, Year 1
During my first year at UCLA, in the first quarter for the Intro to Animation Course, we were to create a 15 second traditional film completely drawn on paper. I made a short gag of a guy walking down the street and getting stuck to a puddle of gum on the street. The Gum is a first-year fundamentals exercise
A man walks down the street and steps in gum. That's the whole premise. But getting a character to feel that.. the tug, the frustration, the little indignity of it.. that's the animation problem. This was my first film at UCLA: fully hand-drawn on paper, no digital cleanup, no shortcuts. I wanted the timing to do the work.
Step 1 : Storyboard Blocked out the gag as a simple storyboard to nail the timing before touching a single frame of animation
Step 2 : Lightbox Camera Test Shot a rough test to explore the dog reaction in the background.. wanted to see if the secondary character added to the comedy or distracted from it.
Step 3 : Animation on Paper Drew every frame by hand. The physicality of paper forced me to commit to every drawing no undo button. I enjoyed every second every frame of it. Made about a 1000 drawings before I had my Aha moment and watched the whole thing come to life on the line testing lunchboxes.
*SKILLS EARNED
Traditional animation principles,
Timing and spacing,
Gag structure,
Storyboarding,
Lightbox technique,
DragonFrame
