“Asbestos” Animated Short
Animated Short commissioned by Itzchitt Productions.
Animation; Nov 2, 2022.
I got an email from Itzchitt Productions, a YouTube channel looking for someone to animate a short over a sort of monologue the channel creator had made about a man dissolving into paranoid delusions about asbestos being put in his mail. This project was the strangest thing I've ever worked on, and was also the most intense, because other than the audio I made every visual component for this nearly 4 minute long short.
The monologue was from a single person's perspective, so trying to figure out how he looked was important for the overall short. A conspiratorially minded person in a comedic work that partially revolved around mail made me think of Charlie Day's iconic performance in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", especially the Pepe Silvia scene, so he became the sort of visual foundation for this character.
I took a lot of visual inspiration from the "Smiling Friends" show and the visual stylings of Worthkids to find ways to push this character's face to crazier and crazier visuals.
I like to plot out thumbnail versions of storyboards to get the idea for shots before actually storyboarding and timing them out. This method isn't very good for teams, since there's a lot here that I can only communicate to myself with, but since I was the sole visual creative here it worked for quickly nailing down the visuals for myself.
The bottom right face was an instance where the thumbnail wasn't enough to figure out the look here, so I quickly sketched out how the character would look in this scene for clarity.
Doctor's waiting room background.
Doctor's Office background.
Conspiracy board background. Lots of fun trying to make details here that made the conspiracy feel big.
window background.
Inside background. I wanted to make this room cohere with the conspiracy board, so you can see bits and pieces peeking out from the left.
bathroom background. I actually based this off of the bathroom I had at the time.