I wanted this film to capture a feeling of melancholy and loneliness. I created it thinking about how I used to feel during a time where I had no friends.
I found that my urge to preserve any snow sculptures I made was similar to how I feel about wanting to preserve things that are fleeting, like meaningful connections or a moment in time. This is what I intended the main theme of the film to be, but I wanted it to be open to interpretation as well.
In the storyboards, there were other characters as well as the girl and snowman, but I decided to cut them out.
There were two main reasons why I decided to do this:
1) Focusing on two characters makes the only human character feel more isolated.
2) Animating complicated moments for more characters was not doable due to time constraints and my current skill level.
Using camera footage wasn’t my original plan either but I’ve become more comfortable with improvising with the time given and producing more experimental results. I think implementing this was successful since I added a simple animation on top to ensure the visuals don’t clash with the rest of the film.
For the sound effects, I recorded my own footsteps and fridge opening to make the world I’m presenting more vivid and believable. I made sure to lower the volume of these sounds so that it doesn’t distract from my friend’s piano playing.
To improve, I will make sure to sync any sound effects with the movements of the character better for a more convincing result.
Overall I think that despite not being able to animate all the scenes I wanted to originally, the film is still successful at conveying the mood I intended.