Graduate Film - Unknown Element

Short Film | Maya, Photoshop, AfterEffects | 2007

The brief for my final year project at the University of Dundee was to create an animated short film based around a chosen speciality - being either traditionally hand-drawn or with the use of computer graphics.

"Unknown Element" was a collaboration between myself and fellow student Andrew Tulloch, with whom I have since gone on to work on several other projects. While the general aim of the course was to focus on character development and animation, Andrew and I decided to focus primarily on visuals while expanding our software knowledge as much as possible. To do this, our central character Frank was used as a vehicle to guide the simple narrative through different set pieces that allowed us to use different tools in varied scenarios. At the time of production, our rendering knowledge was almost non-existent - the entire film was rendered using Maya Software.

Myself and Andrew were awarded the course prize for our work on Unknown Element, which went on to be screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and later at the CINEMA International Film Festival, before then being nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.

Please note that all content shown has been upscaled from its original PAL SD broadcast resolution.