2021 Wrap-Up — chicken fruit

The passage of time in a pandemic is so weird. Entire months feel like they slip by in a weekend, but when we think about things we did at the start of 2021, it feels like they happened years ago. How have we been in our renovated studio for only eight months? Didn’t we finish the Tesco’s Burning Secret project, like, a couple weeks ago? Has it really been over 660 days since the last time we were in a restaurant???

We’re fully on board with the concept that productivity isn’t real at the best of times, and especially not during one of the most troubled periods in recent history. But, just to keep track of these wavy concepts of “time” and “things happening”, here’s some stuff we got up to in 2021.

Winter

The first thing we did in 2021 was write a 2020 wrap-up blog post, in which we set out our goals for the year. One of these goals was to turn our studio space from a depressing half-decorated spare room into a fun, creative workspace. We’re thrilled to say that we achieved this goal, which took us from the beginning of the year to the end of May. Yes, we’re an animation studio, and yes, the thing we did last year that we’re proudest of might be interior decoration. But it’s hard to overstate the difference it makes to have a dedicated space that you don’t resent spending time in.

The studio when we got it

The studio now

During the renovation process, we did also get some animation done. We worked with software company IFS on two campaigns last year; the first of those was the launch of their Moment of Service™ concept and IFS Cloud product launch. This saw our work displayed in some very cool places around the world, including Shibuya Crossing (Tokyo), Times Square (New York), the Burj Khalifa (Dubai) and Piccadilly Circus (London).

We took a nervous trip into the city to see the Piccadilly Circus screens – we wanted to avoid crowds so instead of taking the tube, we got up at 6am on a Sunday, drove to the edge of zone 1 and walked the rest of the way. Trouble was, we’d spent the previous year leaving the house approximately once a month, so it took us a full week to recover from the few kilometres we walked that day. It was fun to see one of our animations on a 783.5m² screen, though.

We squeezed in a few more projects before the snow thawed (one of which was, yes, running outside and making a snowman and a snowdog in the local park, which we later recreated in 3D). We worked on some more bits for life insurance company Money For Them, including putting what we thought was a very funny pun on the Mum character’s mug that went completely unnoticed. We did some more animation bits for some Greenpeace UK online videos. And we played constantly with our brand new otamatone. Probably a good idea we’re still avoiding other people for now, on reflection…

An illustration of a woman in shades of teal. She has mid-shade skin and light hair, and is wearing a beanie, a white T-shirt and a casual jacket. She's holding a mug with the phrase "Mummy for them" written on it.

Right at the end of winter, we took part in our third Cardiff Animation Festival Quick Draw animation challenge – a fun and frantic event where you try to make film in 48 hours. And make a film we did! The prompt we were given was “together”, so we made a quick two-minute animation about a pair of socks that get separated and reunite in a big wash.

A still from Paired (2021). Image shows a 3D render of a stylised bed, as viewed from the floor. Two pink socks are on the floor under the bed, approximately two feet (haha) apart.

SPRING

One of our other goals of 2021 was to finish making our short film about laundry and loneliness. Throughout winter and spring, we had time between paid gigs to get back into production! We went through several iterations of the animatic, polishing story beats and tightening sections. We worked with super-knitter Michelle Kim, who advised us in incredible detail about jumper design, knitting patterns and materials.

A screenshot from a document, white background, black text, with a photograph of a diagram of a jumper, complete with distance measurements for sections of the sleeve, wrists, neck, body and bottom hem. — This is a section from a NINE-PAGE document Michelle sent us. We couldn’t fill nine pages of talk about jumpers if we tried really, really hard.

During animatic-revision season, we reached out to a bunch of friends (and people we’ve worked with, and people we don’t really know but think are very cool) to have them watch through the animatic and offer feedback. (We mentioned this in the post we did about the process at the time, but we’re trying to learn the skill of asking other people for help/advice, rather than just doing everything ourselves.)

One of these friends, a writer who is shy enough that she didn’t want us to mention her by name, happened to say that she was interested in commissioning a small animation of her own. We obviously jumped at the chance to be her favourite animation studio, and so we worked on a fun little wood-and-papercraftesque short for the rest of the season.

A screenshot from the film "Leaving Home". Image shows a scene made in a papercraft style, with trees unfolding as if they are made from origami. There is a folded-paper hill on the left. A woman who looks a wooden toy is about to climb it.

Summer

We kicked off the summer months with more work for IFS – this time on something that involved working with actual actors, which we never usually get to do (apart from each other, when we need to film animation references).

This was a super fun (and very sweaty) experience, in collaboration with York-based production company Hewitt & Walker (who are much more used to in-person shoots than we are, so they did most of the work that day while we stood around and tried to feel important.)

A photograph showing a black man (Edi Adegbola, actor) wearing a blue boiler suit and standing with his arms folded against a greenscreen background. Director Jonny Eveson stands facing him with a printed shotlist in his hand.

In the middle of summer, we were approached by Greenpeace UK again, this time with an offer of pitching on a much bigger campaign that they were running against Tesco’s meat practices. It was one of those incredible pitch processes where they told you the max budget beforehand, so we were able to pitch a few different ideas that fell under that umbrella, rather than wildly trying to read the minds of the client through how many adjectives they use in their emails.

We were honoured to win the pitch, and throughout August and a bit of September, we worked with Greenpeace and the incredible composer Reeder to produce the Tesco’s Burning Secret animation.

A screenshot from the "Tesco's Burning Secret" animation. Image shows a 3D render of the Tesco Headquarters looming over a globe. Brazil is in the foreground, with a large section on fire. The smoke rises and obscures some of the Tesco building.

Towards the end of summer, we picked up a couple of jobs here and there, including something for an as-yet-unreleased project for artist Dan Stirling, and started the process of developing a potential new project with food writer Krish Jeyakumar. (We still desperately want this to happen!! Watch this space 👀)

In early September, we also took our first week off of the year! We’re working on the “still taking time off even though you don’t get paid for it” part of owning a business. 2022 goal, maybe? Either way, after our brief forays into other projects, we were excited to get back into short film production after the break. And we did! With the animatic almost locked, we started thinking seriously about the designs for our main character, Elsa.

A series of six sketches showing various sleepy young women. All have plus-size body types and slightly miserable expressions.

And then…

Winter

Musician Ed Blunt got in touch about an animated music video for his Christmas single. A Christmassy animation set in London was about the only thing that could have pulled us away from the film at that point. And pull us away it did – we got stuck in on the Dome of St Paul’s music video around the middle of October, and production took us right up until the end of November.

A still from The Dome of St Paul's music video. Image shows the inside of a snow globe, with models of St Paul's Cathedral, a snowman and a red London bus. There are balls of snow on the ground, and painted-style snow in the background.

We had very good intentions of doing a bit more on the character designs for our short film, but once December hit, we basically passed out and did not emerge until this week.

Throughout the year, we also attended a bunch of events on various points of the scale from fun to educational (but usually a healthy dose of both). These included the CAF x CTIAF collaboration, the BFI Film Academy Labs’ Creative producing for film & TV, the BIFA anti-bullying and harassment training, ScreenSkills’ unconscious bias and Covid training, some Animated Women UK events, some Cardiff Animation Nights online livestreams, and a whole bunch of online events at Manchester Animation Festival.

Probably the most fun and least educational event we attended last year, though, was the Chicken Fruit Christmas party. If you’re not familiar with UK government rules for limited companies, businesses are allowed a tax-free allowance for seasonal events. However, you have to prove that the money was used exclusively for the event, which can make things tricky when you are two people who live together, and who also don’t leave the house because there is an active pandemic.

So, to make things easier for our potential future HMRC auditor, we were left with no choice but to document the whole thing on Instagram, so they will be able to watch the highlight over and over and match up the snacks from our Tesco receipt with the snacks in the background of our videos. Will this be enough to appease the tax overlords? There’s no way of knowing, but we hope so, because we spent an absolute fortune on takeaway that day.

Photo of director Jonny Eveson from the Chicken Fruit Christmas party. He is wearing a red Christmas jumper and holding up a peace sign. On the table in front of him is a selection of Korean food, including chimaek, namul, kimchi pancake and dupbap.

What’s next?

Apart from renovating our studio space, we didn’t have too much luck with our 2021 goals. We didn’t make our short film – we never even got that far into production. We collaborated with a few people, but more in a “please help us make this project!” way, rather than the “let’s make something cool together for fun!” way that we were aiming for.

But that’s okay! Our goals shifted throughout the year, and we ended up learning lots on the projects we did instead of the short film, which hopefully means that when we DO start production properly, it will go smoother and we’ll come out with a better film at the end.

But it’s always good to have something to aim towards, even if your path ends up taking you in a different direction, so here are some things we want to do in 2022:

🎬 Finish our film
This is the year. It’s happening. No take-backsies this time.
🧠 Keep learning
We feel like we grew so much as a studio in 2021. We want to keep this energy going in 2022 – we want to devote time each week to teach ourselves new skills, and we want to enter 2023 more competent and confident.
⛔️ Practise saying “no”
Part of the reason we never got around to finishing the film in 2021 was because little projects would land in our inbox, and we’d say “oh, go on then” – often working at a heavily discounted price – rather than being honest with ourselves about time and budget. This year, we only want to do that if it’s a project we’re passionate about.
🎨 Focus more on a house style
One of our strengths (we think) is that we can work in almost any style – our Money For Them, Tesco’s Burning Secret and Leaving Home projects are pretty damn different from one another. But when we can, we want to concentrate more on the styles we enjoy working in – namely, things that are more fun, colourful, 3D and character-based.

And if we don’t manage these? Meh, there’s still a pandemic on, so we’re going to be kind to ourselves.

But if we get to 2023 and we still haven’t made our film, it’s going to be pretty dang embarrassing.

As always, stay safe, wear a mask, make art and look after yourself.

Lots of love,
Jonny and Lindsey
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