Senior Spotlight: “The Boy” and the Fragments of Time
Written by Evian Le. Photo courtesy of Evian Le.
At this time during the year when senior projects are slowly unveiled, the several capstone films produced by the Animation department are one long-awaited topic of enthusiasm and curiosity. For this edition of “Senior Spotlight,” we have a chance to talk with the ten wonderful core members of the team behind “The Boy,” a drama told in 3D format.
“The movie, set in the 1200s Viking era, is essentially about a boy who fights to hold on when everything is being taken away from him and tries to claim to his innocence, not succumbing to the world of chaos.” The director and author of The Boy’s plot, Jonathan Gibney, also addressed as “Batman” by the team members, explained to us what the film is about. “It is a self-contained story that is told strictly through action without a lot of dialogues,” Gibney said. “The thought behind it is to take a glimpse into the small moment of time.”
This compelling idea of omitting dialogue is what initially influenced Heidi Husband, the film’s lead character animator, to apply for the film. “The reason why I was drawn to this film is because it is very character-acting focused.” Husband confessed. “It has a big fight scene for potentially interesting physical movements. But aside from that, there are a lot of other moments when we just see The Boy reacting to the environment around him. We are just seeing him experience a moment in his life. As an animator, it’s really cool to get those kinds of juicy acting shots.”
More on the animation style of the film, Husband told us: “it is definitely leaning toward being realistic and having strong poses. I have all the animators start in blocking first, so we can really focus on the strong poses and silhouettes of the character. When those are strong, we then move into spine and clean up from there.”
For such an extensive project, obstacles are unavoidable. Van Nguyen, the lead technical animator, briefly explained to me their work process: “This project really pushes us out of our comfort zone, since we have to work in a non-linear process. At times we have to rig characters without a finished model by creating several place-holders and working on those place-holders instead, which we would later wrap the models on. This is definitely one of the obstacles we have to navigate as a team, how to be efficient and proceed with the next production step even if we’re having a slow down or missing materials.”
For the team, those obstacles make the reward seem even more fulfilling, as pointed out by the film’s producer, Victor Garritano. “The most rewarding thing is seeing it all come together,” Garritano pondered, “after we have around one minute of the film, we just sat down and watched it through. It is really incredible what the team was able to pull off. And the first time I felt like we’ve really accomplished something is last quarter, when we turned in our first milestone.” It was a great moment that he could not wait to experience again, seeing the manifestation of all their time and effort. “They had us working for at least 9 months, we were practically pregnant with the boy” Garritano laughed out loud, followed by the other members.
The team seems to have the least trouble in connecting and supporting each other even though the process of selecting members was spearheaded by the department. “Animation has to be collaborative, by nature,” said Garritano “Everyone has a first or second party connection to somebody else from another project they have been on. Half of the team was on the last SCAD animation studio film Hex Limit.”
As far as what keeps the members motivated, Joseph Enriquez, one of the team’s animators, gave his honest answer: “It is the team. Everyone here is just so incredibly supportive. Our dream goal is to see it all come together, which we are already seeing.” Gabriella Magun and Hailey Skroch also followed by saying how proud they are of the team and the work they have been doing so far.
“Best animated film of 2022 is already here!” Thinh Nguyen announced, and we here at SCAD District are just equally excited!
For the students who are going to be seniors next year and are already at the beginning of their capstone journey, we have a few messages from The Boy team to you!
Rachel Clinton: “Communication is the key. I’ve worked on quite a few other projects and communication is the most important thing to be able to succeed as a team.”
Victor Garritano: “Keep an open mind and ask every question.”
Jonathan Gibney: “Always remember that your senior capstone is a marathon and not a sprint. You have a whole team to support you, don’t burn yourself on everything.”
Heidi Husband: “Just have fun! Try to push things as far as you can, have fun with it and naturally, it will become something great!”
