What is a Frankenstuffie you ask?  That’s what I asked too.  We all know the story of Frankenstien, right? Well, our Frankenstuffie project was similar but different. The overall goal was to discover how we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience. 

It all began with me taking three regular stuffies; a bear, a rainbow dolphin, and a traffic cone, and conjuring up a transformed, unusual, but cute, Frankenstuffie. To do this I cut up each original stuffie and separated the parts. I chose my favourite parts and sewed them together,  designing my Frankenstuffie. 

The overall experience of producing my creation was engaging. I was filled with a little suspense initially because I had no idea which direction the project was heading.  I never imagined I would be playing with stuffies and sewing to work on my writing skills. Everyone’s Frankenstuffies resulted in a lot of shared laughter in the class.  It was very entertaining. 

After completing the monstrous stuffies, we started working on character development by filling in a character birth certificate.  We expanded on the basic details by listing their intelligence level, political beliefs, attitude and behaviour, as well as, food likes. To summarize, my character, Jefferson Grendel Nobel, is a software engineer at Google and longs to be a competitive swimmer. Jeff’s thoughts revolve around his work and trying to pursue his passion. He is quite emotional but doesn’t show it outwardly.  The full character briefing can be found by following the link, Creating a Hero. 

Once my Frankenstuffie’s character was fully developed, I began to build the world around him. This included exterior characters, one of them being Jeff’s old friend Kennady. This process eventually led to the complete development of my story, which this log line will represent. “After overcoming his inner doubts and fears, software engineer Jefferson defies all odds to become a swimming champion, inspiring others to conquer their challenges and emerge victorious.”  

↓Kennanady↓ – Voiced By Kennedy

I feel passionate about the result, even though the process was unfamiliar to me and left me feeling frustrated at times.  It’s harder to create characters and a story than I originally thought it would be. The animation, however, is another story. I felt it was the most painful part of the entire process.  

The animation process started by creating draft images based on my characters and story.  There was lots of messing around with animation styles. Eventually, I landed on a hand drawn, frame-by-frame style. The first draft took me around three days to make and was difficult. This gave me some indication of how brutally long the complete animation was going to be. In my opinion, the most efficient way to start animating was to add the background images first, then add the characters into the scenes after the fact. Once I had my full timeline laid out, characters and all, I then added audio and other effects. With most of the animation completed, things began to feel smoother and I fell into a work rhythm. During the process, I felt confident in my abilities, although I underestimated the time it would take to complete the animation stage. Overall, this stage of the project was stressful but fulfilling. 

I’m happy to be able to share and present my completed project to you.

Feel free to share your thoughts, comments, or interactions on my virtual bulletin board powered by Padlet. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. 

https://padlet.com/caelumc/film-analysis-and-comments-yzeyeb5hauiqg0vj – May need to be updated. This is version 1.1