For our work experience module, I have been paired with second year’s Daisy Higgins and I couldn’t be more excited, I adore her work!
After receiving the brief, I contacted Daisy immediately and we hopped on a Skype call to discuss how would I be useful help for her final film.
After mutually crying over how hard lockdown life as a university student is at the moment, we started looking at her film and the material she has so far. Daisy explained the idea behind the film to me, sent me the film synopsis and a few character sheets she had made.
I might just stick it on here for future reference:
Bellybutton
 Two friends (Billy and Maurice) sit and watch TV (Phil Mitchell Rampage, they are geezers) – they are enjoying their evening. Billy, however, cannot resist picking his belly button and smelling his finger – much to the annoyance of Maurice. He slaps his friends hand away and looks disappointed – this is obviously something which happens often. Maurice goes to bed, upset. Billy remains on the sofa – he looks at bit sad but then happily gets right back to it – more furiously than ever. It is eventually so furious we see up close that he has torn a hole in his belly button. The hole has strange smoke coming out of it.A face/ghosty thing comes out of his belly button – he grabs Billy by the head and pulls him inside his own stomach (after a struggle) – leaving nothing but a small bottom on the sofa. Billy is very small and is falling inside a void – he lands on the floor. A giant man approaches on a horse and asks him if hes lost. They make friends. He is called Mr Beautiful.In the morning in the real world Maurice comes downstairs to find the remains of Billy on the sofa and he is devastated. In the bellybutton world there is a montage of Billy, Mr Beautiful and his horse on many adventures. Maurice is very sad in the real world – there is a montage cut between Billys which shows this (showing the bottom to a police officer.. trying to feed him… cradling him etc. etc)Eventually something happens – maybe something reminds Billy of Maurice – or Mr Beautiful turns sinister – and he realises he has to go home. He does something which causes him to have to strain really hard (lifting a heavy weight… or something) and he explodes out of his own bottom (like silly string) into the real world. Maurice is delighted and they hug
I truly enjoy the storyline she came up with and it made me even more excited to help out on her film.
Afterwards, Daisy also sent me some character sheets of Mr. Beautiful, Phill Mitchell and the Friendly. I find her loose, sort of quirky drawing style incredibly heartwarming. I also enjoy the quality of the line and different line weights.
In terms of techniques, she explained that she’s been experimenting with Blender and TVPaint, but she’s leaning onto animating on TVPaint and cleaning and/or painting on Photoshop. For Photoshop, she indicated I’d look into Animation ToolbarPro which is a plug-in for 2D animation.
Later on, I asked Daisy to send me some her inspirations for her film because I was genuinely interested in understanding what drove her to such visual language. I was surprised to see she has the most random taste in Art and Music, but it totally makes sense. She kindly sent me a link for her Are.na, where she posts photos and videos of whatever catches her eye.
https://www.are.na/share/edBkoEq
I also looked into Are.na, which seems to be a cool platform for mood boards!
In order to better understand Daisy’s style, I did some more research on her work and found the ident she directed for LIAF 2020 with some other CSM colleagues. I commented this ident with her and asked her a bunch of questions regarding the production of it.
Daisy described her experience directing both LIAF and her final graduate film as very independent, in the sense that she continuously stuck to her original ideas. It was so interesting to hear about the process from coming up with this ‘silly’ idea to making into whole short film. During our conversation, Daisy also advised me to firstly come up with a rough idea that involves no more than a few words. Secondly, design the characters/ develop the style I’d like to work in, and finally research, research, research. Do a bunch of research, from going out to museums (when restrictions are lifted) with a sketchbook and take notes to going outside and do some observational drawing.
When completing these three stages, Daisy advised me to plan out my project very well to avoid any rushed results.
It was super helpful having Daisy’s input given that she’s been through this same journey. I was very appreciative of her feedback and we scheduled another meeting for when she has a role for me to start working on.