Happy New Year! We accidentally made a tradition of writing a wrap-up post about the previous year in the first week of January. Our 2021 wrap-up post set out four goals for 2022:
Keep learning
Practise saying “no”
Focus more on a house style
Finish our short film.
Did we achieve these? Well, we reckon we learned a fair bit, though we suspect we’ll always feel like we have so much still left to do. We did dabble more in the fun, colourful, character-based style that we most enjoy. We turned down a couple of things that we could have squeezed in, if we completely burned ourselves out.
And the film…
Well.
In a way, it feels like every project we did this year was in support of the film (the new title of which is tentatively Loneliness & Laundry). Did we finish it? Okay, no, we did not. But as of right now (early Jan 2023), we’re pretty deep into production – and we couldn’t have got here without doing everything else we did in 2022.
WINTER
At the end of 2021, we worked on a Christmassy music video – The Dome of St Paul’s by Ed Blunt. Part of the reason we were so enthusiastic about the project is that we wanted to treat it as a sort of R&D session for our short film, which will also have 3D character rigs and a hand-painted style.
The method we used for the hand-painted section of St Paul’s would definitely not work for a nine-minute film – it took a looong time to do just one minute for the music video. At that point, we still had no idea how to tackle a better way of achieving the look we wanted, but St Paul’s had taught us a bit more about character rigging. Thus, in January, our Tabitha was born.
We played with her design for ages then eventually just made her look like the child of Chicken Fruit creative director Jonny and producer Lindsey.
It was at this point that we got a little distracted by an entirely different film project. For a couple of months, we worked with food writer Krish Jeyakumar to develop a short film based around the relationship that children of immigrants can have to their parents’ cultures, and how food can be a key component of that. We got pretty far into pre-production before this one fell through – we were on version 6 of the animatic and were in discussions with some killer musicians – but alas, it turned out that 2022 was not the right time for this particular project. We were gutted, but grateful for the brief and beautiful time we had with it.
SPRING
March brought along Cardiff Animation Festival, and with it our old pal Cardiff Quick Draw. After the disappointment of our other project falling through, we very nearly decided not to take part in the fun old animation romp, but eventually (perhaps inevitably), we gave in.
Our late start to the 48-hour challenge meant that we were feeling reckless and a bit silly, so the film we made was mostly self-indulgent cheekiness rather than an attempt at anything meaningful.
Turns out: making self-indulgent silliness is a lot of fun! Even though we had about 16 hours less than usual, 2022’s Quick Draw film might be our favourite one yet. That, in itself, was a learning experience: we’ve spent so many years preoccupied with what other people think of what we make. But only caring about whether we enjoyed ourselves meant that we actually, er, enjoyed ourselves. Who knew?
Quick Draw also gave us an opportunity to test out our new rendering pipeline (switching from Arnold to Redshift), tightening the process for if when we start churning out final shots of Loneliness & Laundry. Plus, we got to rave about all the other incredible films made that weekend with the Cardiff Animation Festival crew in their Discord server, and fall deeply in love with Dotty, the CAF mascot.
Film time next, right? Wrong! Everyone knows that the only way to focus on a big project is to get some other smaller projects done first so you’re not distracted during the big one. (Note: if you ever have this thought, that is the devil speaking to you.) But in the spirit of approaching things with a clear head, creative director Jonny spent a few weeks working on a pitch idea he’s had for ages – animating old episodes of a certain long-running British television show.
For this particular pitch, we needed to work on painting 3D models in Procreate. Another bout of Loneliness & Laundry R&D, we told ourselves. Film progress. Very useful.
SUMMER
Chicken Fruit usually has very clear lines of project division. Jonny is the creative drive behind our work: the ideas, the execution, the talent. Lindsey is less of a creative drive and more of a creative nudge: the sceptical face when Jonny’s ideas are a bit too wild. The person who gently suggests we might need a little more than £2.50 and a Toblerone for the five-minute animation someone wants to commission. She’s all right for bouncing ideas off but not much use at anything that requires actual artistry.
But in June, struck by a previously unseen flash of inspiration, Lindsey storyboarded a silly little film based on Chicken Fruit’s experience of watching Channel 4’s Taskmaster and getting competitive with the celebrity contestants.
This is genuinely the peak of Lindsey’s artistic ability
We had so much fun making a silly thing for Quick Draw that we figured we’d try to replicate the process without the extreme time restriction. It took us a little longer, but only by a few weeks. Turns out you CAN make a film in under four years! Someone tell the idiots at Chicken Fruit.
About those little projects that you just HAVE to get out before you can do the big project: introducing Cable Tied, the card game that has lived inside Jonny’s head for years. It’s about (and bear with us on this) connecting electronic devices to a modern computer via chains of cables, and isn’t actually as boring as it sounds.
At birth, all men are assigned either a podcast or a board game idea. Guess we finally know which one Jonny was assigned.
In another move that will probably have us remembering 2022 as the Year of the Pitch, after endless play-testing and scrolling through the Maplin website, Jonny made a full pitch for the game. (If you’re reading this and you’re a commissioner from a games company – no way, we love <insert bestseller here> and <insert slightly less well-known game that proves we’ve done our research here>! We reckon Cable Tied will be perfect for <company name>. Send us an email ASAP <3)
Right now you might be thinking, “Hang on, do Chicken Fruit actually do any work, or do they just mess around with silly films and pitches?” and the answer to both parts of that question is yes. In summer, we started working on a long-term project that is (fellow animators, sing it with us) 🎵 currently unreleased 🎵 so even though that’s been our main focus for months, we can’t talk about it much. Here are some sketches from very early in the process that are vague enough that we can share:
AUTUMN
By this point, we’re closing in on September and we haven’t done that much with the film other than nailing the character designs and experimenting a bit with clothes. But there was one more little project we wanted to get out before immersing ourselves in the big one.
One of our favourite mini-projects to work on is taking an existing piece of art and seeing if we can re-make it in 3D. Sometimes we do this in a single evening as a bit of fun, but other times we make it our focus for a week or so, so we can really dig into a new process.
Our adaptation of Chloe Dominique’s dragon girl was the latter type of project. In an attempt to recreate Chloe’s original beautiful style, we used Procreate model painting with layers of paint strokes, projection mapping, plus some hand-painted elements to translate her piece into a 3D animated loop.
We didn’t entirely mean it to happen this way, as much as we tell ourselves that we did, but working on Chloe’s piece unlocked something in our heads: after being able to experiment a little more with a painty style, all of a sudden everything clunked into place. We fell into filmmaking that very week.
Viewport preview of some character animation and Mysterious Glowing Steam
WINTER
We had just enough time to squeeze in one more pitch to round off the Year of Pitches. In November, friend of the studio and super animator Dani Abram sent us a link to an open call for new animated kids’ shows from Nickelodeon. We had a quick rummage in our drawer of “this would be cool one day!” projects and spent a few weeks refining it into a pitch deck.
It ended up not being the right fit for Nickelodeon, but we’re still super excited about the idea, and have hope our gang will make it onto screens one day! (If you’re reading this and you’re a commissioner of kids’ TV – no way, we love <insert popular show here> and <insert slightly less well-known show that proves we’ve done our research here>! We reckon our Yorkshire-based kids’ show will be perfect for <commissioner name>. Send us an email ASAP <3)
For the rest of the year, we found our focus again. The majority of our days were taken up with a couple of (🎵 unreleased 🎵) client projects, and our evenings and weekends were devoted to filmmaking. In December, we closed Chicken Fruit’s doors and worked on the film full-time until Christmas Eve Eve, at which point we had a bit too much of a good time at the annual Chicken Fruit Christmas Party.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Even though our 2021 wrap-up post said (and we quote), “If we get to 2023 and we still haven’t made our film, it’s going to be pretty dang embarrassing,” we’re actually fairly pleased with the progress we’ve made over the last few months – it really does feel like we needed to do the other projects before we could make it in the way we want to. Currently, our big fat production spreadsheet says we’re at 35.89% complete – our main character is animated to an almost-final level in every shot, about half our sets are built, we’ve done a couple of test shots for the final look and we’re almost ready to start background painting and simulations.
One of the test shots
Apart from the film getting done this year (surely. SURELY), we don’t know what 2023 has in store for us! We’re already talking about our next short film, plus other quicker, sillier shorts that we’d like to make, but apart from that, who knows?
As is tradition, though, here’s what we’d like to aim towards:
🥳 KEEP HAVING FUN 🥳
This is the main one. The big one. We work in animation – if anyone is allowed to be silly, it’s us.
📆 DON’T SPEND FOUR YEARS ON ONE PROJECT 📆
Obviously, some projects need a huge amount of time – and we’re clearly happy to devote ourselves to something for that long if need be! But there’s also satisfaction to be had from working on something for a month or two then moving on, without fretting about whether or not we can make it absolutely perfect.
🤝 SHARE OUR PROCESS 🤝
This year, we’d like to start streaming our filmmaking on Twitch. We’re still learning how to share works in progress, or things that aren’t as polished as we’d like. We’re also horrid little hermits – so if there’s an opportunity for us to chat to people while also being productive and remaining locked in our studio, we want to take it.
It feels like we did nothing in 2022, but also simultaneously like we did loads. Either way, we’re going into the New Year excited about where we are and where 2023 might take us.
With any luck, it’s a journey we’ll be sharing a bit more this year! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook if you’re a mum and LinkedIn if you’re a serious business person, and now also on Twitch! (You might have to be patient with us while we figure out how that one works, though.)
Hope 2023 brings you everything you want it to! Stay safe, make things, be happy and wear a mask. 😷💕
Lots of love,
Jonny and Lindsey
x
