That Doesn't Fit

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Animated Thesis Short Film | Behind the Scenes

This is the trailer. Email me if you wish to see the full film!

"That Doesn't Fit" is a slapstick satirical miscellany depicting various scenarios where people fit in too much. It's a 2D animated short film with a smorgasbord of characters in uncomfortable settings where they fit in too much. The idea is for every scene to say in some way or the other, ‘That doesn’t fit!’

It draws upon principles of humour and satire while keeping a relatable tone with the visuals and audio, almost as if bringing those satirical newspaper comics to life. It makes use of symbolism and comedy to put forth the message of ‘stop trying to fit in too much’ and pose such questions to the audience.

Initially called Jigsaw, it was a random hodgepodge of ideas where things just click or fit in with each other. When I developed the idea further, I thought of incorporating ideas of satire and society, juxtaposed with the wordplay of fitting in.

I made a list of every place and meaning I could think of with the word ‘fit’ and then narrowed it down to people interacting with their surroundings or other people, and the meanings of ‘fit’ to just two, i.e. being socially compatible, and finding space for something.

I had specific themes and motifs I wanted to portray - fitting in too much, absurdity, societal pressure, indifference, and satirical & relatable humour.

I made quick thumbnails and stuck them onto the back of my door to grasp the full picture. After finalizing scenes, I sketched them out on cards which I could then rearrange to make iterations of the storyboard.

I laid the storyboard out with a rough audio track to set the pacing and timing of the film. Within another month I had the animatic ready, which gave me a good base to go ahead with animating.

Animatic V4

I doodled out some character designs and made some visual development sketches. I decided that the colour scheme should be split complementary and went with red, yellow, purple and blue.

Before I began animating, I made some styleframes to see what works, which brushes to use and what pipeline I could follow in order to complete it the quickest.

For the jigsaw puzzle scene in the middle, I laser-cut some jigsaw pieces and painted faces on them, except for the mouths, which I added later on as animations.

I attempted stop motion but wasn't able to go through with it given the time and the glare from the paint.

So instead, I scanned the pieces and moved them in After Effects to give a faux stop motion effect. This at least let me retain the organic paint strokes.

Using the animatic, I made a rough animation pass on TVPaint, after which I used Photoshop to cleanup and colour everything scene by scene.

The brunt of compositing went into nailing in the intended treatment of the film. The use of textures and colour improvements gave each scene its own flair while still unifying the film. For the texture I used a combination of static, video and hand-drawn overlays.

I worked with a sound designer, Emily Beth, for the audio. She made use of homemade sounds like boxes, metal pans and bowls, and even added in her voice and instruments. This kept things organic and thematic.