"Use Protection" a 48h AIDS Prevention Short

This 48 hour Animation Challenge was an excellent Opportunity. 

First and foremost, it was simply one more project to work on, to better my skills and have something to show. 

Then, it was a great personal challenge, to push my ressourcefulness to the limit and see what i could produce in such a short time

But it was also, and more importantly a team effort, and a great experience in terms of ambiance and teamwork with people from my grade and up in Animation, as well as a Motion Design Student. 

Finally, it was a way to raise awareness and spread an important and serious message in a new fun and engaging way!

So Let's get into the Creation of this project !

1. Meeting The Team

Here we are from left to right : 

Léa Dietrich, our 2nd Year in Motion Design 

Jeanne Graehling , our 3rd Year Animation Student 

Me , Esther Immélé, 2nd Year in Animation

and Fernando Greshake, also in 2nd Year Animation

2. Creating the Scenario

Once we got the team together on the first day, it was time to start Brainstorming together to find a scenario fitting the theme of AIDS prevention.

We had to be fast to not loose time on the production, but the scenario could make or break this whole thing!

In the end, we settled on Fernando's idea:  A three-parter with a comedic repeat. 3 different situations, 3 different missing protections, ending on the morale : "Use Protection"

3. Storyboarding

The next step was to translate our idea into images. There again we had to be quick. We each took one idea out of the different parts and started setting up the scenes and the actions. Some ended up being cut or reworked as we went. 

We finally finished, a few hours in, with our 3 parts : a knight without his armor, an exorcist without his rosary and of course,  a man without his condom. 

4. Drawing the Backgrounds and the Characters

While Fernando was busy editing the animatic, Jeanne started designing the Characters and Léa and I focused on drawing the backgrounds.

We decided on thick black lines to give a comic book feel and very different color palettes to distinguish each scene. 

As for the Character Design, we found those two charming

5. Finding References

Before and during Animating, finding the right references is really important to convey what we want to convey correctly. And well, to get what we want, we have to do it ourselves so it was a lot of taking pictures of each other, and trying out various poses and movements. 

The trickiest reference to get right was for the last part, since it involved two people and by the time we got to it, half of the group was alseep. A pillow had to play the part of the second person and it worked well enough.

6. Animating

This was obviously the biggest part of the project time-wise. We joined in on the animation as soon as the backgrounds were done and it lasted the rest of the day, the whole night and the next morning. 

We had chosen the software (Adobe Animate), pen settings and drawing style in advance, so our animations wouldn't clash with one another. 

Then, after finding our references, we drew our rough animations, cleaned them up and colored them in. 

To my surprise, the color part was the most time consuming out of all of them. 

But after a very short night and a pretty long morning, we were ready to go on to the next step

7. Compositing

The second to last step, but often crucial, especially with the Exorcist's very ambiance-driven part. 

It's on this step that we bring everything together, adding the backgrounds behind the animations, adding some color corrections and effects where they are needed... We also had to animate the background elements and the camera movements. 

So while Jeanne was finishing up the last  animations with color, and Léa started editing the credits, Fernando and I worked on the compositing. 

Here are the comparisons for the 2 parts I did.

8. Sound-Designing

Finally the last step : the sound. 

Léa and Jeanne took care of that one, while Fernando and I did the few lines of voice acting needed, then cheered from the sidelines. 

Everything else was done and once the sound was added, we had a finished movie in our hands! 

9. Sharing !

Now for the Real Final step, it was time to share our hard work with the other teams ! 

We all worked so hard and created amazing projects, and it was wonderful to see everything finally unfold on the screen. Frankly, i did not expect such good products to come out in only 48 hours, but here we were !

Overall, I'd say this type of event is absolutely amazing, and as exhausted as i ended up afterwards, i would absolutely do it again!