Grumpy, Grouchy, Grumbling Guillermo

Hello everyone! Before I post my thesis video, I thought it would be nice to share this project since it's the first animated film project I got to be a part of. This was one of the projects in our Animation Principles class, where we started out with 5-6 groups. I was with Irish, Sab, Abby and Cathy. After a while three of the other groups dropped their project and the members were distributed to help out with the surviving groups.

This film, which we titled "Grumpy, Grouchy, Grumbling Guillermo," tells the story of a lonely man and the dog that changed his life. It's a cliche story but turned out cute, nonetheless. I could say I helped design the characters but Irish made most of the concepts. She also helped Cathy and Abby with the layouts and backgrounds. Abby created the cutout components. Sab worked as the director/producer duo.

As much as I'd love to show you the video, I don't have any links now. I don't know if any of my teammates will upload it but when someone does, I will update the link. The animation took two semesters, almost a year to make but we finished it close to November last year. We entered the film in the local Animahenasyon (animation festival) and flew to Bicol to stay over at the venue. In our group, only Irish didn't travel to the convention.

I met a lot of animators like Ms. Grace Dimaranaan (owner of Top Peg studio), plenty of local illustrators and other people from the industry like Mark Bambico (creator of the local animated series, Barkada Trip) and Ms. Lina Valdez, owner of Pinoy Animation Magazine. We also met foreign animators like Hasaan Muthalib from Malaysia and delightedly, Mr., from Gobelins, the French animation school we all so admire.

It was a wonderful experience, even though we had to stay another night due to a storm. Unfortunately, we didn't win the student division but that was okay. We made a lot of new friends and met new people in the industry. I remember feeling super motivated that week and relieving the memory gets me excited for drawing again. I hope I will have another opportunity to work on another project like this next time.