Tall Order
"At the height of the prohibition, an unusual detective takes the mafia head-on..."
Tall Order is a 2D noir-comedy about a detective who infiltrates a mafia den to put a stop to their evil plan—an academic short film project produced by the 13-member team CerePara Bellum, worked on from September 2020 through April 2022. Created in an almost entirely remote setting due to the COVID-19 lockdown, with the introduction of a hybrid structure in the third quarter of 2021.
Rookie Awards FINALIST | 2D Animation Film of the Year 2022
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Excellence Award Recipient
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Highly Commended
Filmshort Creative Festival WINNER | Best Student Film 2022
Oregon Short Film Festival FINALIST | Best Animated Film 2022
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About the Production
For Tall Order, I served as the Producer, Animation Lead, and Character Artist.
My primary responsibilities included creating and maintaining the animation style for the film, overseeing the animation department to watch for inconsistencies, and providing critique and draw-overs for all shots in the film.
In addition, I also managed team organization and communications, both internally with the team and externally with the advisors.
All shots were animated in Clip Studio Paint EX, and later composited in Adobe Premiere with some technical VFX completed in Adobe After Effects.
We used OneDrive as our main form of source control, as we could immediately sync file updates upon saving, which enabled us to quickly "pass" assets back and forth during the COVID-19 pandemic's imposed remote learning. For meeting logs and other tools, we used Google Drive because of auto-sync as well.
Our pipeline can be simplified as:
Storyboards, 3D Blocking, Line, Paint, and Composite.
We created simplified 3D block-outs of our major settings (the office, dock, and warehouse) to expedite layouts.
This way, the animators could begin work immediately, while the environment artists continued refining each background. This greatly boosted our overall efficiency and allowed us to catch problems right away.
As an academic project where each member of the team had to juggle several other classes, efficiency was the name of the game.
Creating documentation that was equally as useful as it was quick to make was integral, so many of our most-frequently used model sheets and tutorial guides were created using hand-written notes or simple diagrams.
In addition, we held a minimum of twice-weekly team meetings for stand-ups and roadblock identification, plus additional meetings between myself, the Co-Producer, and the Director to address any other concerns. The intentionally thorough communication in pipeline was a major factor in our team's overall success.
*Note, password is required for viewing.
You can request password access here.