What is the film about?

An eight-year-old kid navigates her life as a child of divorced parents.

What influenced it?

Since the story of this film is based on my personal experience, I took a lot of inspiration from my childhood life. For the character design of this film, I took some inspiration from Wallace and Gromit, especially for the dad character. When I was little, my mum told me my dad liked how Wallace grinned with every single tooth showing and found it very funny. Therefore, whenever I see Wallace and Gromit, they remind me of my dad.

Another character inspiration was from my mentor at CalArts, Neil Graf. He did this demonstration of how he draws a cartoon horse on the whiteboard, I thought it was really funny and cute because the horse has a mouth that looks like a goldfish. I didn’t end up giving my design those features, but that gave me inspiration for the design in my film.
(here is a link to his drawing: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCsbrA_jfZl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

A little background information...

My film has an optimistic and positive take on the experience of being a child of divorced parents.

I was a kid, seeing how miserable children of divorce are often portrayed in stories made me feel miserable as well. It guided me to look at the negative side of things. So now that I can, I want to make something on this subject that brings warmth and optimism, and that highlights how a child can still feel loved by both parents.

The story in the film came from my personal experience, and I hope to reach an audience with a similar experience and bring warmth to them.

How was the film made?

The film was made in 6 months, mostly by me alone. I came up with the design in the third week of that school term. At the time, I had a different film idea that was in the making, but I struggled to develop it, and I started looking for other ideas. I was stressed about it and started doodling in my life drawing class, and the idea came.

The rest was me doing everything step by step. I know the process painfully well because I have dedicated my past 3 years at CalArts to making a lot of short films on my own. This one would be my 8th.

I did the storyboard over the span of 5 weeks, took my time on it because the story is the most important part, and then I had my talented classmate, Nico Bidan, to help me with the colour script because I was struggling with it. The colour script helped me set the tone of the film.

I spent the next six weeks painting all 90 of the backgrounds, and started animating in mid-November. All of the animation actually only took three weeks, because it was during winter break and there were no classes, and I was able to work from the moment I woke up till I went to sleep. I spent the next two weeks colouring and then a few more weeks compositing.
Having a fixed schedule really helped, and I never had to stay up late or pull any all-nighters. It was mentally challenging to work every day for months, but after being at CalArts, I’m used to it.

The music was made by composer Etia Famiga, who is a music student at CalArts. He came up with the beautiful music for this film, and when I first heard it, I couldn’t help but put it on loop. It fits the film so well, and I feel lucky that I got to work with him.

And then I had Chanmi Ro as my sound designer, who was in the film programme at CalArts. I didn’t have to worry too much working with her because I have worked with her on two other films already, and she’s great at what she does.

This is the longest film I have made so far, and it is quite a challenge, especially since the art style is different from the art style I usually draw in. But this is also a film I have always wanted to make, and I think it’d be great as a gift to my parents for supporting me to pursue my passion. I kept it secret from them until after it was screened for the first time. The film is something I am very proud of, and to me, it is the perfect thesis film to graduate with.