Cone Witch

A design project focused around a mysteriously drab city and the circus troupe which has come to visit. Imitating the artistic style of 'Wolfwalkers' from Cartoon Saloon.

The Heart of the Garden

The origin of the city's extensive plumbing system, containing the Plumber's Altar.

Synopsis

After Their End focuses on a small automatic vacuum robot named VacuuBee (VB) and his experience facing the changes that occur to his home after humans are gone. We begin by watching him go about his cleaning routine, oblivious to the chaos occurring in the outside world. Upon completing his work, he settles back into his resting place and goes into sleep mode. The changes to his home begin subtly with open doors and falling leaves, but quickly become broken glass and overgrown plants as his routine becomes impossible to maintain. After running out of storage space, VB is left with no choice but to settle down next to the strange fungus he has been watching grow and power down on his own terms.

Director's Statement

After Their End started as a simple story about a robot taking care of a flower as the home it was supposed to maintain breaks down around it, inspired by the student films "Resilience" and "Sleep Mode". I have always been a massive fan of stories relating to the flow of time, overgrown skyscrapers and fallen statues evoke a unique sense of wonder and charm that only ruins can. My hope was that by setting the film within a single room we could emphasize how the space changes as the story goes on, highlighted by the match cut time skips. Creating a student film is a difficult task, and I'm proud that the extra planning I put into our pipeline allowed us to make it reality despite our limited crew. I learned a lot from this film, and cannot wait to apply that knowledge to my next project.

Managed a team of up to 17 artists for over 30 weeks

Led several production teams and provided detailed feedback

Created guides for animators and background artists alike to ensure consistency

A small cleaning robot comes to terms with the post-apocalypse as the room it's tasked with cleaning breaks down around it.

I began developing After Their End mid 2024 as part of my storyboarding class with the intention to pitch it for the slate the following year.After positive reception, the project went forward and was officially greenlit in early 2025! From then on, I stepped into one of my many roles as director and got right to work.

Story changes were finalized, and my role quickly shifted to focusing on managerial and directorial duties such as assigning my crew tasks and giving feedback.

In order to streamline production, I decided to use 3D integration in Storyboard Pro to create final layouts.This way, background artists already have an exact layout with correct perspective to paint over. This eliminates the back and forth of steps such as framing and layout, saving a lot of time by removing feedback steps.It also enables animators and background artists to work on shots simultaneously without inconsistencies.

The props in the room therefore all need to have their design sheets used to create models to place into the final room.

Completed models are collated to create the room, which is then imported into Storyboard Pro for layouts.

Completed layouts are then sent to background artists and animators to work on shots simultaneously.Background painted by Mars

The work is then combined and composited in Toonboom Harmony.

Layouts

After compiling all the final models into the set, I created layouts for each shot by first placing the room model to match the camera angle from the storyboards and animatic.Once this was complete, I placed the VB model throughout the scene in alignment with all of the key positions for the shot. This allowed my animators to have direct reference of VB in the perspective of each pose throughout the shot as well as a rough timing guide for the key poses. Animators would often rotoscope these poses to ensure a solid foundation for the rest of their work.By doing layouts of every key pose, it allowed us to ensure consistency in VB's perspective and keep him on model throughout the entirety of the film.

Backgrounds

A version of the layout without VB's key poses was then sent to our background artists, who would trace the background with tones before adding texture and colour.Background by Mars Redmond

Animation

Simultaneously, animators worked off of the layouts to bring life to VB's movement and expressions.Cleans and roughs by Kira Dickson, colour by Gilbert Griffiths

Compositing

Animation and backgrounds are then combined and effects are added. This includes the automatic line recolour effect to create a lineless final look and the screen effect to replicate an LED pixel layout.With the exception of the two prior mentioned effects which were created with help from Colin (Onionskin on youtube), I designed the effects and final comp look of the film. Once all the effects were designed I held several sessions to teach my animators how to use the effects to composite final shots for the film.Animation by Gilbert Griffiths, Compositing by Kira Dickson

Edit and Sound Design

All of the shots were then collated into a final edit where I colour corrected to compensate for any inconsistencies or errors that occured during compositing before the final edit was pushed through to sound design.I then did sound design in Protools over the course of a week of full time work days and finalized with a cinema mix.

Example of task scheduling and allocation in Flow. Tasks are for the vertical slice shown above.Task tracking was set up and accomplished for every asset, and crew members have been told to upload their work as versions. More Flow screenshots below.

Team organization and feedback was done through a discord server which I set up, and over the course of the trimester I have sent over 850 messages of feedback and organization to my crew.

Additionally, I have been tracking crew attendance at production meetings, shown here.Attendance has been a consistent issue throughout the trimester, Especially from my concept team, of which only Mars has had consistent attendance and communication. As discussed in my devblog, this has caused a significant bottleneck which I have had to overcome.

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Who am I?

Born in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains of California, I've always had an interest in storytelling. From early childhood I could be easily found telling stories or with my nose buried in a book. As I grew older I fell in love with the mediums of animation and comics, and ever since have been striving to build my skills until I can tell stories that inspire others the way so many have inspired me. After moving to Australia to study animation I have honed my skills and met many incredibly skilled and passionate people who have made me absolutely certain that I made the right choice to pursue this medium. I dream of one day being able to tell stories, whether as a showrunner or director, which encourage others to take the same path. Until then I want to use my artistic and storytelling skills to bring characters, worlds, and the stories within to life.

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