Happy New Year!
You may notice that our previous blog post was last January’s wrap-up, but we did actually do stuff this year.
Firstly and most importantly: that short film we’ve mentioned in every New Year’s post since 2021? Completed it mate.
But first, we want to talk in extremely vague terms about some other stuff we did in 2024:
MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT
The main project that has kept us busy (and radio silent) for the last few years is finally (sort of) out in the world! The app we’ve been designing various bits for is currently live in Canada, and is on track to be released in the US and beyond in the near future.
Since the team behind the app approached us back in 2022, the concept has evolved quite a bit. This has been super fun – we’ve been able to make so many different things within the universe; have learned so much about mobile game design; and have been able to dramatically improve our skills in modelling, rigging, and texturing.
Something that has remained fairly steady throughout the app’s evolution is the thing we were first approached to work on: the character design of the avatars used in the app’s universe.
The app was originally called “Polo”, which is why there’s an otherwise inexplicable P on this poor lad’s T-shirt
We’re used to designing and making characters, both on paper and in 3D. But that’s easy – you design one character, then you move on and design the next one.
We were not used to essentially designing thousands of characters: making enough assets that anybody can make an avatar that looks like them.
Over the summer, with the help of hero freelancers Ploy and Kayleigh, Chicken Fruit made over 200 character assets: hairstyles, eye shapes and colours, noses, ears, eyebrows, mouths, facial hair, clothes and shoes. When we say we’ve been able to dramatically improve our skills in modelling and rigging, this is how.
As well as the character assets, last year we also made stuff for one of the games within the app, set within a city. That was another 50+ buildings, obstacles, vehicles and platforms, plus textures to add even more variation.
We’ve also done a fair bit of actual animation, too, but we’ll save that one for the global release! Looking forward to seeing where this one takes us next.
An Unreleased Project
In August 2024, we started work on something else that won’t be released until later this year. We can’t share a single thing about it, but we were so happy to get to work with this client that we didn’t want to not mention it at all.
We got to work with Reeder again on the music for this one and, as usual, they were able to take the mess of unrelated adjectives we threw at them and came back with a piece that fit the brief perfectly. Really excited for this to be out in the world – hopefully this summer!
Another Unreleased Project
We’re still working on this one! Our 2025 New Year’s animation has some nods to the style and content of this project, and it’s for a cause we strongly believe in, but those are the only hints we can give for now.
We were given quite a lot of creative freedom when coming up with the concept for this project. In an attempt to make sure we weren’t just sticking to our comfort zone, we tried loads of different ideas for the design of the main character.
Ultimately, we didn’t end up going with any of the more stylised designs, but we’ll come back to these later. 👀
Play
Because all of our free time has been taken up with making the short film for the last few years, it’s not only our blog posts that have taken a backseat: we’ve had no time at all for silly fun personal projects.
However! Since we finished the film in August, in autumn and winter we got to make some cute little Instagram posts for no reason other than we fancied it.
Finally living up to our New Year’s goal from 2023, we used our dusty Twitch channel to stream the process of making these, which was a lovely cosy way to spend our evenings.
But apart from occasional dips into seasonal scenes featuring small mammals, mostly we’ve been flooding our social media with promo posts about our short film. Which brings us to…
Loneliness & Laundry
We’re going to do a very indulgent and detailed making-of post about this film at some point, but for now, here are some highlights from the tail end of production:
Music
We worked with Eli Rainsberry on the music and sound for L&L and the final product is gorgeoussss. The full soundtrack will be coming to all good music services near you hopefully sometime in the spring, but for now, please do marvel at the one-minute trailer version that we can’t get enough of.
Promotion
Look, we’re not very good at social media. Some people say that as a point of pride – look at me, I’m soooo superior to the brainless users of The Internet – but the shameful truth is both Jonny and Lindsey are fairly online, we just haven’t quite nailed how to use the World Wide Web for professional purposes.
Now we’re not spending every free moment on film production, we’ve been trying to clumsily use our social media accounts again. We’re trying to find the right balance between earnestly sharing our work and being kind of silly, since we’re firm believers in not letting our fun creative jobs become boring stressful office jobs.
As part of this silliness, one of our post-film promo posts was a parody of those reels from graphic design influencers who make stupid faces at the camera.
We had loads of fun making this and thought it was a hilarious joke! Unfortunately, it seems we were not obvious enough that we were having a little jest, and people thought we were just pivoting to influencer-style marketing.
appreciate your support anyway, pals x
Ah well. We made ourselves laugh – that’s all that matters, eh.
Festivals
Not gonna lie to you, pals: we had a rough few months re: festivals.
We used one animation festival’s submission deadline as our deadline for finishing the film. It was a great motivation! We were so excited about it!
Then that festival rejected us.
Then the London ones rejected us.
Some festivals that we got into with our previous short film rejected us.
We submitted to some really obscure ones just so we’d have a chance of being accepted SOMEWHERE: they rejected us too.
If you noticed that our L&L promo posts slowed down significantly after a month or two, this is why lmao.
BUT.
In early December, we got our first acceptance! And then we got another one! And another one! (We also got an “Honorable Mention” from Los Angeles Animation Festival, which we assume they give to everyone they reject just so they don’t feel bad.)
So now not only are we less sad, but also in March of this year we’re going to TOKYO, BABY.
2025
As mentioned above, for Unreleased Project #2, we dabbled with some experimental character designs to make sure we weren’t just falling back on our usual style.
Even though we didn’t end up moving forward with any of the weirder designs, we had a lot of fun doing them! So, for our traditional New Year’s animation, we harnessed some of that experimental energy – with an expert soundtrack from the Chicken Fruit Children’s Orchestra.
Here’s to a year filled with fun, laughter and silliness. After all, our family members think we spend our days playing with crayons and mucking about. Why not actually do it?
Lots of love,
Chicken Fruit
x
