Océane Fairbanks

2024 Demo Reel

A collection of my best work edited to a nightcore remix of Income Tax by P'tit Bellivue.

Thesis Film

Just One More Lane advocates for active transit while exploring cars as a socio-political force. Fascism can be defined as ‘colonialism turned inward’; this framing was the basis for developing the film’s message.

ACAB Sticker Set

This sticker set the tone and design style for what would become my thesis film, Just One More Lane.

Moving Poster

This piece started as protest art that I would bring to political demonstrations. Press photographers were attracted because unlike other picket signs, it was readable from a distance in a crowd.

During my time at Ringling College, my found family have been personally targeted by the dismatling of New College, the Don’t Say Gay Bill, and the prosecution of the Tampa 5. Created as an exploration in mixed media, this animated poster responds to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign.

The animation is made of 20 paintings made using hand-cut stencils. Stylistically, it explores the idea of graffiti in motion. Thematically, it investigates sililarities between politcal forces in Modern era Europe and contemporary America.

Nickelodeon + Ringling KCA Collab

This project was developed within the Ringling College course 'Compositing for 3D' under the Department of Motion Design. It's important to note that it was exclusively a Ringling College endeavor and was not broadcast on Nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon graciously provided our class with original plate footage, stock imagery, and animated assets from the Original KCA2020 Hero Spot, assigning us the task of replicating the composite 1:1.

My roles encompassed keying, rotoscoping, animation cleanup, camera tracking, color correcting, color grading, clean plate generation, some rendering, and match-moving.

The animated components were contributed by Nickelodeon-employed artists:

- Megan Visconti (@megaa_beth)

- Hannah Segraves (@hannahsegraves_)

Christian Huthmacher (@rederiffic)

- Gonzo Janer (@gonzalo_janer)

- Tim Lines (@timmylines)

- Chris Stearns (@nachrisco)

During this Project, Nickelodeon Animation Director Tim Lines, and VFX Supervisor Ish Nazmi reviewed and critiqued our work.

This project was assigned to our class in teams. My team comprised of the following students:

- Ava Meller (@avamichelle.art)

- Cici Fu (@cicici_fu)

- Maya Li (@mmayalii_)

- Océane Fairbanks (@motionbyocean)

Shots I worked on

The Moon shot was the most difficult shot in the entire project. My approach differed from the other teams in several key ways.

- Using Keylight’s Screen Despot settings to minimize time spent rotoscoping

- Re-Rendering the slime asset using Arnold instead of using the provided C4D standard render

- Double-dolly zoom camera move

Unionize MD

The Problem 

The Motion Design industry relies heavily on freelance artists bordering on industry wide misclassification. Contract labor restricts employees access to benefits, collective bargaining, discrimination protections, and other worker’s rights afforded to full time employees.

Project Brief 

Create a short animation advocating for unionization in the motion design industry to be distributed in professional networking groups

Design Style

Founded in the wake of the Disney animators' strike of 1941, United Productions of America (UPA) pioneered limited animation techniques and defined the look of Mid-Century Modern animation.

Using film grain and drop shadows to emulate the look of animating on physical celulloid film, our selected design style allows for fast paced production and nods to the history of union membership in our industry.

Storyboards

During the storyboarding process, I referenced the Every Frame A Painting essay on Chuck Jones, one of UPA’s contemporaries. Following the Expectation vs. Reality formula to misdirect the audience’s attention for engaging visual gags.

Animation Process

Following in UPA’s footsteps, cel animation allowed us to begin production as fast as possible and gave us the flexibility required to create limited animation without fighting rigs. The original timeline was 3 weeks so animating on 3’s was a must to meet the quick turnaround.

In the past, I’ve animated puppeted characters and used cel for effects animation, but this was my first foray into character-based cel animation. All those extracurricular figure drawing sessions were paying off!

Compositing

While trying to emulate the techniques of Mid-Century Modern animation, I took shortcuts in compositing in a few places. Instead of redrawing my background art, I opted to fake the line boil with a subtle turbulent displace effect animated using hold keyframes.