From September 2021 to July 2022, I worked on a short film named Hunger Pains. Written and directed by myself and produced by Lydia Hibbert, the film was made using Adobe Animate for the animation, Adobe Photoshop for the backgrounds, and Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro for compositing and effects (hand-drawn animation, photography, masking, scaling, rotation, puppet pins, textures, et cetera). A freelance three-dimensions modeller named Laura Boots (who I met at the United Kingdom Creative Festival in September 2021) was originally going to do models and effects for the film, but she was unavailable, so I had to do the effects myself. Music direction was done by Kate Wintie. An arcade platformer video game based on the film was also made from February 2023 to March 2023, using Construct 3 and Photoshop. The cabinet was designed using cardboard, printed Adobe Illustrator cutouts and glue. The game was part of an exhibition at Young Animators Club called Young Animators Arcade, and was also used as a template for the other young animators’ Construct 3 games (a tutorial for making the games can be watched here). I was told by Lydia that they had played my game and enjoyed it. It was decided that the film would be shown at the exhibition as well. We even designed two logo animations (both in two dimensions in Procreate, Illustrator and After Effects and in augmented reality using Adobe Aero), one for Hunger Pains, and another depicting Ferguson the Fox bouncing past and behind the ‘Young Animators Arcade’ logo on a pogo stick. A video of the exhibition (with footage from Hunger Pains) can be watched here.

A hungry squirrel walks along the seaside towards a food stall. He has come from the forest to the seaside due to the other squirrels laughing at him for not having a stump full of stored nuts for the winter. Desperate for sustenance, he spots a pack of French fries. He rushes over to them and is about to eat them, when a seagull swoops down, swiping the squirrel’s snack. Enraged by the loss of his food, the squirrel chases after the feathered thief. Will the squirrel retrieve his food, or will he get a surprise?

On 2 April 2023, the exhibition opened between 1pm and 4pm, and I attended it at 12:30pm. There I saw my animation projected on the wall and my game projected on transparent paper in my arcade cabinet.