Shep Turner - Portfolio

This page is a look into some of the process of creating my senior thesis film at the Cleveland Institute of Art in order to get my Bachelor of Fine Arts.

The soundtrack, by my friends Tension on the Heartstring, is up on Bandcamp!

My film is about a tumultuous moment in the friendship of two young boys, Avery and Matt.

It overwhelmingly deals with themes of relationships and empathy but touches on themes of the importance of nature and the effects of abuse as well.

Intended style of animation.

Throughout the process of production, I've been updating this page with all of the vis dev, backgrounds, and animation progress I have as I've made it, so scroll down to see how the project progressed over time.

Background Test 1

Background Test 2

Background Test 3

Background Style Variations

Photo

Digital Painting

Digital Painting w/ Textures

Character Lineup (Avery, Matt, Taos, Dominic)

Avery Expressions

Matt Expressions

Rough Location Concepts

Forest Study

Color Script

Animated style test using the background style I've settled on for the film.

I went out to shoot more photo/video reference of the forest and I am now working on integrating those photos into my storyboards. Having photos with the specific camera angles I'm going for in this boarding stage will help me out a lot when I go to paint my backgrounds for the final film.

My voice actors have been chosen!

Trees I will be reusing often in my backgrounds.

I have begun work on backgrounds using reusable assets (grass, trees, foliage) I've created.

By creating reusable assets I will be able to create the ~50 backgrounds I'll need for the film much more quickly than if I were to paint every background from scratch. This will hopefully leave me a lot more time for animation.

Starting rough animation.

Testing out a potential color scheme change for the first big point of conflict in the film.

Lighting/color scheme changes for different points of the story.

First shot of my film at final output. All of my backgrounds are now finished.

Figuring out layers of animated lighting in this scene.

I have all the lines from my voice actors and I'm now in full rough animation mode.

Decided on the type of bird in the film - the Northern Flicker.

Back from winter break and back to work. Roughs are coming along!

Rough animation is now 100% complete! Here's a promo video I cut together with some of my roughs.

A trailer with some finished shots and a preview of the score that is being written by Tension on the Heartstring. Almost there!

As of Wednesday May 1st, my film Flicker is complete!

Go back to the top to watch it.