Case Study: There Is No I In Island
There Is No ‘i’ In Island Trailer (above). Full episodes at the bottom of the page.
There Is No ‘I’ In Island is an eclectic collection of short films cracking open the experience of the COVID-19 lockdown. The series reveals the island’s resilience when lutruwita/Tasmania suddenly found itself cut off from the world… Hours of candid voice recordings have been lovingly woven into glorious, allegorical stories visualised by extraordinary Tasmanian artists and animators.
Ten Days On The Island
Still from There Is No I In Island, ‘Reflecting Times’. Animation by Mel Roach, colourist Paula Hatton, illustrator Lucy Gouldthorpe.
I had the pleasure of leading the animation process for the five part animated web series There Is No I In Island. The series was produced by Rummin Productions and principally funded by Screen Australia. It premiered at 10 Days On The Island festival in March 2021. The series was nominated for best animation and best web series at the 2021 ATOM Awards and played at 19 film festivals.
The series is based around six hours of interviews that were self-recorded by members of the public during lockdown 2020. These interviews were edited by director and editor Rebecca Thomson into five themed episodes exploring the psychological experience of lockdown. Thomson and producer Catherine Pettman selected five Tasmanian visual artists to collaborate with to design imagery for five distinct episodes. It was then my job to adapt the material for animation.
The animation production was structured to deliver the series in a relatively short 3 month period, a time frame which necessitated a team approach. I began the project by starting with the storyboarding and previsualisation process. This assisted me in breaking down the content of each episode to identify the animation technique and workflow best suited to adapting each artist’s style. I worked with experienced storyboard artist Paula Hatton to visualise four episodes and storyboarded a fifth for stop motion animation. I decided to split the production of the series into a different technique for each episode, which fitted the creative vision of the producer and director. This also meant that we could take advantage of the diverse technical skills of a range of Tasmanian animation professionals.
Still from There Is No I In Island, ‘'Messages From The Mountain’. Animation by Amara Gantz, colourist Paula Hatton, illustrator Joshua Santospirito.
We engaged a cut-out animator Scott Baxter to adapt the art of Allan Mansell for ‘Connected By The Sun’. Animation was completed digitally, and a compositor carefully adapted the animation to simulate the paper textures of the original printmaking.
For the ‘Reflecting Times’ we needed a highly flexible style and chose to use digital hand drawn techniques in TV Paint. Lucy Gouldthorpe’s artwork did not require background art so we were able to focus our time on beautiful textured colouring using Tasmanian software Procreate.
Still from There Is No I In Island, ‘Forest Of Fears’. Animation by Vivien Mason and Matt Daniels, artist Elizabeth Barsham.
Still from There Is No I In Island, ‘Connected By The Sun’. Animation by Scott Baxter, artist Allan Mansell.
Film still from There Is No I In Island, ‘Singing Grubs and Spiders’. Puppet by Jenae Hall and Vivien Mason, character design and background art by Sally McAteer, compositing by Aaron Luke Wilson.
The ‘Messages From The Mountain’ episode also used a pen and ink style (by Joshua Santospirito) and was digitally animated and coloured in the same way as ‘Reflecting Times’, achieving a flowing and naturalistic style. The workflow for this episode was additionally complicated by the need to use the illustrator’s landscape backgrounds. Procreate did not support video exports with transparency in a suitable format, therefore I completed layout and compositing in After Effects, collaging the available backgrounds to achieve the illustrator’s aesthetic. I was also able to animate character shadows and composite transitions linking the live action footage with the animation.
The ‘Forest of Fears’ episode features sophisticated visuals from painter Elizabeth Barsham. The complex and detailed organic forms in this episode were a challenge to animate, particularly within the time available. I started by directing two background artists to convert the original paintings into a widescreen format. They also completed significant work converting the paintings into layers which enabled us to add depth and independent movement to individual plants and characters. I rigged and animated the characters in After Effects and provided them as completed elements to a second After Effects animator who animated the backgrounds, cameras and a few of the secondary characters.
Finally ‘Singing Grubs and Spiders’ added a lighthearted episode to the series. I proposed animating this episode using stop motion animation because I felt that this aesthetic would add a unique and distinctive visual style to the series. I decided to use an overhead angle to photograph the puppets which allowed us to simplify the construction of the puppets and integrate them with time efficient digital backgrounds. I was able to composite multiple animation elements to construct the finished characters. For example, we shot a six legged walk cycle of the ‘bug’ separately to the lip sync, allowing us to quickly fulfill complex animation requirements. Our compositor handled chroma keying, additional lighting and fluid effects to complete the process. This final pass was crucial to the visual success of the episode.
Overall I am very pleased with this complex and ambitious series. Our fantastic collective of Tasmanian professionals worked remotely as a cohesive team and produced high quality animation in a short time frame. I am thrilled that producer Catherine Pettman and director Rebecca Thomson were able to realise their artistic vision and that I was able to facilitate their first creative exploration into animation. Together we created a sophisticated and diverse series of animations which uniquely represent our culture.
Further updates about There Is No I In Island can be found on the film’s Facebook page.
FESTIVALS
Ten Days On The Island Screenings in Burnie, Launceston + New Norfolk Tasmania, Australia 5th – 21st March, 2021 City of Hobart Liberty Loop Screenings on public screen in central Hobart Tasmania, Australia March - April 2021 ANIMATOR: International Animated Film Festival Poznan, Poland July 9th 2021 Oscar Qualifying Festival Sicily Webfest Ustica, Sicily, Italy July 16th, 2021 Realist Web Fest Nizhny Novgorod, Russia July 29, 2021 Seoul Webfest Seoul, South Korea August 19, 2021 NOMINATED Best Documentary, Best Animation and Best Special FX Supernova Digital Animation Festival Denver, USA September 3, 2021 Lima Web Fest Lima, Peru September 14, 2021 The Animattikon Project Singing Grubs and Spiders, Forest of Fears Paphos, Cyprus September 11, 2021 */ 17th Athens Digital Arts Festival | Tactus Forest of Fears Athens, Greece September 20th 2021 Anmtn! – Online Animation Awards Forest of Fears Online event September 22, 2021 HollyShorts Film Festival Los Angeles, USA September 23, 2021 Oscar Qualifying Festival Rising of Lusitania – AnimaDoc Film Festival Forest of Fears Poland September 24, 2021 Montreal Digital Web Fest Montreal, Canada September 30, 2021 NOMINATED Best Documentary Web Series and Best Animated Web Series Factual Animation Film Festival Forest of Fears Online event October 16, 2021 Bilbao Seriesland Bilbao, Spain October 19, 2021 WINNER Best Documentary Animae Caribe International Animation & Digital Media Festival Forest of Fears Port of Spain October 28, 2021 TIAF – Tbilisi International Animation Film Festival Tbilisi, Georgia October 30, 2021 JURY SPECIAL MENTION Best Documentary Copenhagen Webfest Copenhagen, Denmark November 1, 2021 WINNER Best Documentary Baltimore Next Media Webfest Baltimore, Maryland, USA November 4th, 2021 WINNER Best Animated Series Cygnet Arts Council Screening Series Cygnet, Australia November 6th& 7th 2021 Rio Webfest Rio de Janeiro, Brazil November 25th, 2021 WINNER Best Quarantine Series ATOM Awards 2021 Australia December 16th FINALIST for Best Web Series and Best Animation Los Angeles Animation Festival Forest of Fears Los Angeles, USA December 4, 2021 Digital Media Fest Rome, Italy December 10, 2021 WINNER Best Original Idea Los Angeles Animated Film Festival Los Angeles, USA January 13, 2022 Palm Springs Animation Film Festival Forest of Fears Palm Springs, USA March 24, 2022 Webseries World Cup Creator’s Choice Award March 2022 NOMINATION Best Animation and Puppets
CREDITS
FOREST OF FEARS
Artist - Elizabeth Barsham
Animators - Vivien Mason, Matt Daniels
REFLECTING TIMES
Artist - Lucy Gouldthorpe
Animator - Mel Roach
SINGING GRUBS AND SPIDERS
Artist - Sally McAteer
Animators/Puppet Fabricators - Vivien Mason, Jenae Hall, Avon Blazely
Additional Puppet Fabrication - Paula Hatton
CONNECTED BY THE SUN
Artist - Allan Mansell
Animator - Scott Baxter
MESSAGES FROM THE MOUNTAIN
Artist - Joshua Santospirito
Animator - Amara Gantz
CONNECTED BY THE SUN
Artist - Allan Mansell
Animator - Scott Baxter
MESSAGES FROM THE MOUNTAIN
Artist - Joshua Santospirito
Animator - Amara Gantz
Producer - Catherine Pettman
Writer/Director/Co-Producer - Rebecca Thomson
Animation Supervisor - Vivien Mason
Storyboard/Background Artist/Colouring - Paula Hatton
Additional Colouring - Sally McAteer
Compositing/Motion Graphics - Aaron Luke Wilson
Stop Motion Studio - Super Fun Happy Time
Camera/Editor - Rebecca Thomson
Music Composition - Catherine Joy
Title Design - Angela Pelizzari
Sound Design/Colour Grade - Michael Gissing
Storyboard/Background Artist/Colouring - Paula Hatton
Additional Colouring - Sally McAteer
Compositing/Motion Graphics - Aaron Luke Wilson
Puppet Making And Stop Motion Behind The Scenes
There Is No I In Island (2021)
Web Series - Documentary Animation
See more behind the scenes photos of how we made stop motion puppets of a host of Tasmanian cave creatures…