The Great Tale of Mr. Pebbly Rock is my very first attempt at a short film. Now that it's finished, it doesn't necessarily feel like a film to me. Maybe it's more like a 'short gag'. I wanted to see if I was able to create a very thin storyline by just illustrating a character and by building a world around it. The most important thing to me was being able to capture how the characters felt through facial expressions and without having them to talk.
Because of primarily being an After Effects animator I've always struggled with drawing, storyboarding and illustrating. And so I set out to face my fears and take on these things one by one.
No matter how badly drawn, I quickly realised (once again!) how valuable a storyboard is. After I had the story in place I immediately felt more comfortable exploring different types of illustration styles. I settled on fairly simple shapes with some heavy textures, while being able to take full control over the character's facial expressions.
I asked the awesome Drew Simmons to help out with music and sound design and lucky for me, he said yes.
One of my intentions for this short was for it to be able to loop endlessly. And so if you were to remove the start and end titles the film should loop forever.
All in all this has been a very pleasurable experience and I'm happy to say I've learned a ton.
