Cold War
A snowball fight for the ages. An animated short film I created in a 2D-production class at SCAD. The focus was to create an engaging story while learning the animation industry's pipeline all in 10 weeks. This included creating the initial story concept, visual development for layouts and character, story boarding, cutting an animatic together, painting backgrounds, animating and sound design.
Watch the film here and take a look at what went into making it below!
Story and Visual Development
Once I had a general idea for a story I wanted to tell, the next step was laying out the story beats and Treatment. For Cold War, it looked something like this:
1. Two kids are playing in the snow. 2. One kid throws a snowball at the other. 3. The other kid retaliates with a giant snow weapon.
Treatment: A quiet snowscape. Pine trees are heavy with shelves of snow on their branches. Below the trees, two kids are getting acquainted with the new landscape. One of them has a sinister idea. He crafts a snowball and chucks it at the other boy. The snowball hits with a sting but the boy slowly stands and walks away. Slowly, a massive tank made from snow emerges, aiming at the other boy. The tank shoots a monstrous snowball which takes the kid away without any resistance.
After getting to know the story, the next step was finding the look of the film. This involved creating style frames including characters and landscapes.









Character Design and Development




Rudy and Whittaker may both love snow days, but they are two very different kids. My number one priority when designing these characters was just that.
Rudy is an energetic kid. When designing him I thought of kids I knew who just liked getting a rise out of others. To communicate this personality, I tried keeping things angular but rounded in order to convey his younger age.
Whittaker on the other hand is a lot less harmful at first glance. However, underneath his numerous layers and vacant expression is a kid who is calm, confident, but most importantly, vengeful.
In order to complete the short within the 10 weeks we were allotted, it was best if films stayed under a minute with a maximum of three shots. Because of this limitation, what was shown had to be deliberate in order to get across the story. In order to get the most out of my shots, I experimented with camera moves and reveals in order to get the most out of each shot. Eventually, I ended up with this animatic, which stayed pretty true to the film's final pacing.