Hi, it’s been a couple weeks since I posted my first full animated short, EDY-EM: OVERLOAD! Given the reception that it got, I want to give commentary into some aspects of the production of this short.

Initial Concept

Some shots from the animatic I made for EDY-EM: OVERLOAD.

As stated in my first blog post regarding the project, this was something I had in my mind during and after working through several animation jams through 2021 and 2022, where I felt confident in making a full short. Initially, I wanted to animate something short as a response to an art trend on ex-Twitter, where users draw their characters with the color palette of modern Cartoon Network infomercials. This was reflected in the color choices in the animatic that I made (shown above), but I opted to go from cyan to navy blue to make the night scenes more obvious. Eventually I decided to turn this idea into something original and a bit longer.

I also wanted to expand on the ideas presented from my first movie submission on Newgrounds. A fair amount of animated work that I did since then was entirely based on animating to the music, so I wanted to try my hand at animating a music video next.

Music Choice

Given the character and her background, I wanted to look for some electronic music that would feel appropriate to animate to. A few friends suggested I look at music made by @vurb, and I found this one that I liked a lot.

I wanted to base the underlying plot behind the animation around both the tone of the music, the mood that I got from it, and the name of the track, so I came up with the idea of someone being overworked at their job. This comes from personal experience of both working at my real-life job and treating art and animation as not just a hobby, but a discipline. There were weeks that doing both of these at the same time can make me exhausted and frustrated, which is what I wanted to display when I was making the animatic for this short. However, I do not think I have the capability yet to talk about topics like this through artistic expression, so I just tried to focus on primarily making the animation fun to watch.

Notably, the song itself was updated to a newer version while I was still working on the animation. I wanted to incorporate the new section that was added into the song since I briefly thought up of a better climax/resolution to the plot. However, I decided to refrain from doing so due to time constraints.

Favorite Shots

These are a few shots that I really liked animating because I either learned something new or improved on the things that I animated before!

Screencap at 0:24.

Despite the lack of action, the section from 0:13 - 0:28 (and 1:15 - 1:16 to a lesser extent) is one of my favorites to work on since it’s my first time I did actual lip syncing. The only experience I had with animating mouths beforehand was done to audio with no actual dialogue. Although I do think it’s a bit unrefined, matching the general mouth movements to the syllables from the VA’s audio was a nice challenge.

Screencap at 0:58.

Everything about the concert section at 0:28 - 1:01 was probably the most fun I had animating despite the amount of work, but I feel 0:49 - 0:56 particularly stands out to me. Previously, I worked on an animation loop that involved dancing to the audio portion provided, and this is my weakest work in my opinion. That is why I really wanted to make the choreography and camera direction as best as I can make it, especially since the 14 seconds before this shot act as its build-up. There are a couple nitpicks that annoy me a bit on re-watches, but I felt like I pulled this specific shot off very well.

Screencap at 1:18.

The sections at 1:11 - 1:13 and 1:17 - 1:23 were done with additional editing by using the software DaVinci Resolve. I haven’t had much experience editing with DaVinci before this project, and it took me a bit to navigate through its imposing interface. Nevertheless, I’m excited about what I can possibly do with this for future projects since that can possibly cut down the amount of work I need to animate in Clip Studio Paint.

1:17 - 1:23 was also notable for me because this is the scene that changed a lot from the original idea I put down on the animatic. Originally, I wanted to animate Edy doing the same gestures but rotating in place, and the background would also scroll panoramically. After considering the amount of time needed to do that and with some input from a couple friends, I decided to cut it down to just alternating between the two backgrounds and color templates.

Next Steps

EDY-EM: OVERLOAD was a personal success; I proved to myself that I am capable of making a full animation short given enough time, effort, and self-discipline. However, working on this project has also made me learn that it demands a lot of time and effort from me, especially for a project animated and edited all by myself. I think the biggest takeaways I have gained from working on this project for more than a year is that 1) I need to set some reasonable deadlines, even with passion projects like this one; and 2) depending on the time and resources needed, I have to decide when a shot looks “good enough” to devote time onto other shots.

These two look familiar…

Those takeaways will matter a lot, as I’m currently brainstorming a follow-up to the “fake” trailer for Music Makers! One of the reasons I worked on EDY-EM: OVERLOAD is to see if it can be a proof of concept to what I want to do with Music Makers. I feel confident enough that it’s definitely possible; I already have some ideas for the music choice, basic plot, and character designs that I want to do for the “pilot”. However, although I haven’t started any actual work yet, the scope of this project would likely be larger than EDY-EM: OVERLOAD. I’m expecting it’ll take at least the same amount of time, if not longer, to create something that I’m happy with, so that is why I’ll have to keep what I’ve learned from OVERLOAD in mind. Whenever that time comes, I’ll start posting periodic updates on the project like with this one.

Closing Thoughts

I’m very, very happy that this animated short got on the front page. Although some of my previous works have been frontpaged, this is the first one where every part of it is entirely original and that is solely done for my personal goals and enjoyment.

I’d like to thank some people that helped me on this project:

• @LilSpook and @immadametal for devoting time to do voice work again;
• @kiyo, @Zeon02, and @Nine for providing feedback during the production process;
• @Kekiiro, @Slimygoo, @ForgeFrog, @DrewPBalls, and @Bacun for general kind words and support as I worked through production;
• @PhasmaGORE for providing words that helped me push to get the project done by the end of ‘23.

I also would like to thank (almost) everyone who has left a comment on the video. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.