2nd Place – Instant 36

I am very proud to announce that my submission placed second at the instant36.at film festival!

For this festival one had to make a short film within 36 hours, with a given theme. This year’s theme was “There is no place for time in our world”. Over 100 people signed up, 60 teams submitted – I didn’t even think I would enter the top 26 that would make it into the screening. Which is why i am so honoured to have been announced by Gregor Schmidinger the maker of “Nevrland” in such a nice way. Still cannot believe it.

My strategy was simple:
slow is safe and safe is fast & story over everything

After riffing with Max Wetzelsdorfer for a few hours, we ended up with a story set in a dystopian world where time is illegal, since as we all know: time is to blame for all our problems like climate change, illness, ageing, …

While Max wrote some lines for the cliché expository radio broadcast and the dictator’s speech, i did the Storyboard.

I used blender’s newly improved (yet still far from perfect) Grease Pencil tool to create an organic looking traditional style animation, while retaining all the benefits of working in a 3D space (cool camera moves wow). I knew i wouldn’t have time to do any colouring, which is why i settled for this “Animatic” style.

I also set out to have a first render way ahead of time. This one was eight hours before the deadline:

As you might have noticed: it sucks! So i sent it to a few friends and got very helpful feedback (most notably from Max), mostly to fix the very stale pacing.