BUNNY Journal

The foundations of this project were first laid all the way back in my first year of university, where I was tasked to create a moving sequence meant to embody a single emotion for my 4D foundation class. This was the first time I had ever challenged myself to animate something before, and it was also my first time using Clip Studio Paint EX— the software that would eventually become my sole medium for my FYP.

My emotion of choice was ‘Love’— an indescribable feeling that can manifest itself and be shown in ways that are different to every unique relationship. The logline of this animated sequence is essentially the same as BUNNY: Love is about the love story between a ‘bunny’ and a ‘wolf’— except in this early idea, these archetypes are represented by two human women. What initially begins as just an innocuous romance gains a darker edge when it’s implied that one of them (the ‘wolf’) has a hidden history of killing her partners, and the other (the ‘bunny’) accidentally finds out. But rather than running away screaming, because of the strength of their love, she willingly accepts her fate and allows herself to be consumed. 

Using Love as the main inspiration, I decided to take those admittedly crude building blocks and expand upon them to create something more up to my current skill level. In the initial stages of ideation for my final year project, I contemplated simply using the existing characters to do an improved retelling of their original romance. I even drew some concept art for how that might potentially look in fully rendered form too. 

However, after more exploration and discussion with my supervisor, I began to consider making some changes— the largest of which was replacing the human protagonists with animals. Since the rabbit symbolism was so heavily used in Love, why not fully lean into it? Not only that, but with the inclusion of heavier topics like abuse, the use of anthropomorphized animals as protagonists can help ease some audience discomfort without compromising on the meaning and message. 

After developing the basic premise with my first draft, I went on to use the comics I made in my graphic storytelling class to further define the narrative beats. The first assignment which required us to create a one-page comic was where I played around with visuals. In fact, the first two panels went on to heavily inspire the motifs in the final outcome.

For the next assignment, I was tasked with creating an eight-page short comic. This was where I truly began nailing down the finer details and possible look of the final film. I embraced the butterfly motif and made it a central part of the storytelling. The addition of a broken pearl necklace and a glass of wine in the fourth page was also simply a random choice meant to allude to luxury, but ended up inspiring the final draft. Additionally, in practically every frame where Hunter appears, I tried my best to make the power imbalance not obviously overbearing, but always present. I always made sure that Hunter would be looming over Bunny, regardless of whether he was performing an affectionate or rough gesture. This would perpetuate a constant undercurrent of intimidation, directed at both Bunny and the audience, signalling Hunter to be the one in control in this relationship. This is a visual feature that I made sure to be carried over to my final storyboards and compositions.

With the narrative structure complete, I went on to do my final storyboards on my Ipad. Highly inspired by my previous drafts and comics, I included a mix of all the elements I liked most into the final scenes. This also helped me decide on which motifs I wanted to focus on such as the colour red, the butterfly, the pearl necklace, etc.

From there, I began with my first rough animatic.

While designing Bunny and Hunter, the most important thing I considered was scale. In my earliest draft of them, I found the difference in their sizes to be lacking. In order for their physical inequality to be the very first thing the audience notices, I consciously made Bunny much smaller than Hunter, only reaching up to his stomach. This not only reflects their actual size difference in nature as rabbits and wolves, but it also reflects the extreme imbalance in power— Bunny is practically child-sized compared to Hunter, despite them being consensual adults, making the distinction even more uncomfortable.

Other than that, I also made sure that their designs would be somewhat androgynous without any distinct male or female features. I wanted audiences to come to their own conclusions about the relationship without relying on gendered stereotypes. But interestingly, everyone who viewed my film the first time all unanimously assumed Bunny to be female-presenting and Hunter to be male-presenting. This is why I use she/her pronouns for Bunny and he/him pronouns for Hunter, but in reality, these characters are genderless.

Both characters also went through some minimal changes. For Bunny, I changed her ears from being rounded stumps and instead went the realistic route. This would allow for more secondary action when animating her, and also offers opportunities for her ears to flick and swivel like a true prey animal would. Similarly, Hunter’s ears also became much more wolf-like, and I also added triangular cheek tufts. This would also allow for more secondary actions, while moving Hunter’s design language away from ‘dog’ and more definitively ‘wolf’.

While developing the style of the film, I made a first draft of the style frame with different colour combinations. I explored both a cool and warm tone palette before my supervisor advised me to go for a full black and white look with minimal splashes of red for certain elements. This would give the entire film a classic old-timey look, almost like a soap opera from the sixties. Not only that, but it would allow for sharper contrast between the environment and pure white characters.

Initially, my film was intended to have a much simpler and illustrative look with thicker lines, no rendering, and minimal details. This was based on the feedback I got from my first drafts, which were praised by my supervisor for being clear and concise. However, I felt that while the environments indeed kept things clear, the characters did not stand out against them, even when they’re coloured bright white. There was also very little visual interest and did not convey the vibe of opulence that I wanted. In the end, I decided to add a lot more detailed elements and employ heavier rendering. I also added lots of filters to give the backgrounds a softer, hazier look, which could give the impression of gazing at a dream— which is exactly how Bunny views her time with Hunter as.

Once I had my production schedule figured out, I used the rough animatic as a guide to do my roughs, cleans roughs, then my final line art. Thankfully, my rough animatic compositions were clean enough that I had to make little adjustments. And while a clean rough stage was not the most necessary, it helped me flesh out smaller details of my animation that I could remember to add in the final stage.

After applying the flat base colours to all of my animations, I had not intended to add any extra shadows or highlights as I was worried I would run out of time. Thankfully, I was able to allocate a full day to doing some basic rendering towards the end of production period. I did not go in frame by frame to render each scene, but rather, I simply overlaid several multiply and glow layers on top of the entire scene to create the illusion of depth. Throughout this stage, I stuck to using Clip Studio Paint EX. During the rendering process, I had to find a middle point where characters would be obvious but not to the extent that they do not seem to fit within the universe. Thus, I mostly used simple gradients to blend the stark white bodies of the characters with the grayscale environments. I also used a textured brush in some areas to add more visual interest.

BUNNY is the largest and hardest project I have ever worked on in my entire journey as an artist. It trained me to not only maintain mental resilience in the face of hardship and stress, but also taught me how to work within my boundaries in a way that will accomplish the goal of creating a piece of art while also being creatively fulfilled. It also gave me a lot of opportunities to spend time with my fellow students, get good advice, and be part of a supportive community of artists who all want to help uplift each other. This is an experience unlike any other, and I will not forget it for a very long time. I could not have done it without the support of my friends, as well as my supervisor Hans-Martin Rall, who always encouraged me and gave me the strength to carry on. Thank you.