Ashton Lester

Animation

Project name: Sonder

What was the main driving question for this project?

The main theme I wanted to cover for this project is the idea of 'sonder', the strange sensation you get when you look around you and notice that everyone you see has a life as strange and interesting as your own. The whole reason I wanted to chose this is because often times when I take the train, everyone on it is always looking down at their phones.

What is it?

This project is a 2D animation, utilizing both rigs and hand drawn animation. It is heavily inspired by the work of one of my personal favorite artists, Katnay. His pieces called 'Love, Music and Paperwork' was one of the main inspirations that gave me the ideas of creatures on a train. a few of my other inspirations were 'Paperman' by Disney, 'Klaus' by Netflix and 'Mocca & Co' by Nadiaxel.

'Love, Music and Paperwork' by Katnay

Drive link - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PbTBeIZP8QluXuBmFJo-nY2kpHC-cCwF?usp=sharing

The artist

Email:

University:

1021847@student.sae.edu.au

Personal:

ashtonlester5@gmail.com

Social media links:

Deviantart

https://www.deviantart.com/illlatlasllli

Art Station:

https://www.artstation.com/redgekko

Skillset:

Character concept art
Character animation (2D)

Programs used:

Toon Boom Harmony
Adobe after effects
Adobe premiere pro
Krita

Some of my other artwork

The characters

As with any story, the characters are what make it interesting. All the characters in my scene were based around the idea of sonder, this is why they are all strange creatures, aside from the main character. The idea was that the main character is so focused on his phone that he doesn't realize everyone around him is a bizarre non-human being, symbolizing how different we all are.

The Horseman

The Headless Horseman who lost both his head and his horse. Now he travels by train. His temper is quite short, you could say he loses his head rather easily. He says that's complete nonsense, but we both know it's true.

For this guy, I wanted to create a character that could interact with things in a really different way. Originally my plan was to have his head completely fall off and roll on the floor, with him picking it up and putting it by his side before later putting it back on, however that had to be cut due to time restraints.

The main character

This is the star of the show, the main character Jackie. He enjoys hot chocolates on cold winter mornings and looking at his phone despite nothing of interest actually ever being on it.

My design ideology of this character was to try and make him a more 'realistic' looking human, at least in comparison to the other characters. He is just a generic human, nothing overtly special about him. The green of his scarf was used to contrast the orange of his hair, creating a nice dynamic for viewers to look at.

Vikki

A sassy and no-nonsense demon from down below, Vikki takes pride in the fact she failed year 10 and still can't figure out what an alarm clock is. She calls these 'features', however I think 'bugs' is a more appropriate term.

Vikki was a very interesting character to come up with. She was one of the first I envisioned and took a lot of inspiration from Millie from the Youtube series 'Helluva Boss' by Spindlehorse Studios. She also took a lot of design cues from Meg, the woman in 'Paperman.' I tried to make her rather slim, with excessively thin limbs to match the sort of style seen in a lot of animations, the main one being 'Klaus' by Netflix. Results weren't as well done as I had hoped, but we'll call that a feature.

Zara

Picture waving at someone in the modern day, and actually having them wave back. Shocking, I know. Zara likes to try and make herself stand out, ironic considering she's usually the only one in the room who's bright blue. And also dancing. And singing. And laughing.

Zara belongs to the amazing artist that inspired this whole project to begin with, Katnay. He was nice enough to give me permission to use her and just like Penn, there was no way I was going to let that opportunity pass. She was definitely the most enjoyable character for me to make. Her upbeat and joyful personality was a nice break from the other rather bleak and dull characters. Zara is constantly moving, meaning she's a character a lot of people will probably be visually drawn to.

Penn

Penn the kobold may come across as a short fused angsty teenager, but in reality - that's exactly what she is. She keeps her hands to herself when travelling, lest she accidentally smite someone. Again.

She belongs to artist and good friend of mine, Anna Ladd. She gave me permission to use her and I immediately jumped at the idea. Penn is interesting because she's so much shorter than the other characters. She adds a nice height dynamic to the crew, along with just being plain cute. (Don't let her hear you call her that)

Winston

Don't let his gruff appearance fool you, unlike most tough guys you see on screen, he really is just as bland as he seems. His sense of humor sunk along with his ship long ago.

By far the biggest character in the scene, he was a test of my character design capabilities. The whole idea behind him was to create a character that looks vastly more different from any of my current ones. I think I succeeded in that area.

The process

The project began with brainstorming ideas, like any other project. I quickly settles on an idea I liked, that being 'sonder'. After pitches and locking the theme in, I discussed it a bit more with Steve and we talked about how I could go about enhancing the idea and adding in things that could make it more impactful.

The first part of production was making the background.

The next part was getting the characters in. To start I created pseudo reference sheets for all the characters, just so I had a grasp of colours, proportions, sizes and all that. These were then showcased on the tower during test screenings.

Once all the characters were completed, I began work on rigging and drawing them. Rigging was a painful process as I had never done it before, and they had a bad habit of breaking every ten minutes.