Where were you at the End?

Two astronauts left after the death of earth must face a daunting question. Do they give in to despair, or cling to survival and dare to hope there may be someone out there?

Red, a headstrong but emotionally driven scientist, tries desperately to push off their fate, diving into his work to avoid facing their circumstances. Navy, a quiet and reflective presence in the ship, illustrates to keep the memories of the people and places he loves alive.

As they bond in their place of work, they begin bonding outside of it too. Sharing stories at their dinner table and helping each other through a situation neither understands how to deal with. They grieve together, heal together, and dance hand in hand at the end of time.

Student Bio

Alex Doyle Kingston

I primarily specialise in 2D Hand Drawn Animation. My role on this project is to animate the majority of the rough animation, and give notes, aid and edits to my other teammates on how to improve their animation or get the best possible result. I am also in charge of keeping track of the animation schedule, what scenes need to be prioritised, and allocating different scenes to each artist depending on complexity and skill level. So far all my effort this term has been dedicated to roughly animating the majority of shots in this film. I have had help of course, but as Gemma has taken on the task of clean-up artist the rest will be up to me from here. So far, according to our schedule, we are up to date with the animation that is expected to be done. However as I am now mostly on my own we may start lagging behind, so I will be putting quite a bit of effort into making sure that I keep up with our deadlines.

The biggest challenge I have had to overcome this semester is drawing on model. We were recommended by our mentors to animate in a more realistic style, something I have never fully attempted before. I agreed as I knew it would be great practice for me and would push me out of my comfort zone. Starting off I was nowhere near model, but my teammates have noted I am getting closer to it with every new rough I create. With the help of model sheets from our character designer, Gemma, I will be able to learn faster, causing me less frustration when I go to animate a new scene. When I do struggle I ask Gemma for notes on what I should change and fix as it is crucial I get as close as possible to what the final product should look like as it would take longer to complete the clean up animation.

Connor Minnaar

My role is directing and background art, from thumbnails to finished paints. In the backgrounds, I work to keep details consistent to make the environment one cohesive space, frame and focus the characters, build the world that they live in and make it feel a certain way through colour and lighting. As the director, I work with each person to make sure we are all working towards one visual and emotional style, stitching together the story, art and music into one piece.

This semester has been a mix of those two jobs, but most of my time goes towards the background art. Over Christmas break and up until February 14th was just the roughs. I spent the most time on each individual rough, making sure everything was well designed before finalizing them. I finished all the clean linework on March 7th, and now until april 15th I’ll be working on painting. After that editing and compositing will be my main focus, as well as helping with what is left of animation.

A lot of time also goes towards giving director notes to Alex, Gemma and Evan. They’ll send their animations and I’ll write a list of small fixes in expression or body language to try and bring out the acting potential of the characters, and occasionally give draw-overs. I also am in contact with our music composer, Evan Barron, who I give director notes to and put together the audio with the visuals so he can understand timing and mood. It also helps the entire team get motivated to continue, seeing our hard work come together slowly but surely.

Gemma Crowley

My primary roles are character design, 2D hand-drawn animation, animation cleanup and compositing. As the character designer and cleanup artist one of my main roles is making sure the style of the characters is consistent throughout the animation.

I started this semester with rough animation, helping Alex and Connor build up a bank of roughs before I moved on to animation cleanup. My primary skill is drawing, and I wasn’t very confident in my animation skills. Alex and Connor have been a great help with it, showing me where I need to add in anticipation frames or how to improve my animation arcs so things don’t look stiff. I moved on to cleanup the week after midterm and Alex gave me a rundown of how cleanup in Harmony works. I’ve also been dipping my toes in compositing, experimenting with adding line boil to the clean animations. One of the storyboards I did last semester included a pull focus shot, so I figured out how to separate all of the layers of the scene and achieve that effect in After Effects with virtual cameras and blur effects.

Personal Links:

Alex Doyle Kingston:
Linkedin
Instagram

Connor Minnaar:
Portfolio
Linkedin

Gemma Crowley:
Portfolio
Linkedin