Jingle

final animation

"Jingle" is a short animation done for the 2025 fall semester of Gunner School. The animation portrays a sadden Old Man watching old home videos of his lost cat, Jingle. Upon being visited by the manifested memories of Jingle, he realizes that he needs and has the strength to move on from these dark moments.

This project was completed in 2 weeks.

Credits:

Marissa Rakowski - Storyboarding/Animatic, Sound Design, 2D Animator, UI / FX Animation

Johnathan Theobald - 3D Modeling, Lighting, Compositing, Rendering, Environmental Artist

Mackenzie Boerner - 2D Animator, Character Designer

final Storyboards

During production, our mentors had requested an alternative to the story to make the message clearer to the audience. Scenes were taken out to meet the deadline, and also shifted to portray the intro scene as the Old Man playing home videos as opposed to a Soap Opera narration.

Black and white comic strip illustrating an old man watching home videos of his missing cat, Jingle. The man is seen sitting in a chair, watching a TV. After some time, he reaches out and grabs a yarn ball, which rolls off-screen. The yarn ball enters from off-screen and rolls around his armchair. The man grumbles and reaches for the yarn ball, which he then grabs. The comic shows the yarn ball entering from the left, spinning around the chair, and rolling down stairs. The sequence ends with the yarn ball in the man's hand, with the camera focusing on his lower hands. Red lines and text indicate movement and sound effects like thuds, crashes, and windings of yarn.

UI / FX Animation

When designing the overlays for the home-videos, we wanted to simulate a VHS tape recording that was been very dated. So these were made along with a coded countdown timer for the VHS system itself.

2D Animation

Mackenzie spearheaded the animation on this project, but I took over animation the First-Person shots of the animation. Theses were assets created in Adobe Illustrator and animated in After Effects. Jonathan then composited the PNG files into Blender for the final animation.

Illustration of an elderly man watching old home videos of his lost cat, Jingle. The image includes three panels showing different camera views and annotations highlighting focus and ejection areas for the videos.