Elias Rosas - 2D Animation - 2024

The video you just watched above is a showreel with all of the animation I did for my Senior Thesis Film at Savannah College of Art and Design, I Spy Your Privates.

I Spy Your Privates is a collaborative Senior Thesis Film, blending 3d environments and props with 2D Animated characters and puppets. In this film, I took on the role of Animation Director. This meant that I had a large hand in doing the Keys, Rough Animation, Critiquing and doing draw-overs for the other animators, Tie-downs, Puppeting, Cleanup, and Lip-sync for all 2D Animation on our film.

Note: Since this was a collaborative film, I need to specify I will ONLY showcase and specify the things that I did. I do not take credit for anyone else's work.

With that being said, I've broken down my contribution to most of those shots and my creative process below this.

I hope you enjoy!

Over the course of the film's production, I've spent the the most amount of time and energy on this shot. This was definitely one of the hardest shots I've ever had to animate before.

I was responsible for all 2D Animation: Keys, Rough Animation, Tie-downs, Puppeting, and Cleanup.

This shot was one of the most difficult I've ever had to animate myself. How do you even record reference for this?

You see, that's the funny thing! You kind of can't.

Even though it's a conceptually challenging shot to animate, I knew I wanted to take a crack at it since I saw the original storyboards. In this shot, I ended up being responsible for the Keys and Rough Animation of our main character, Dougie. Im very happy with how this shot turned out!

This Shot I was Responsible for 2D Animation:

Keys, Rough Animation, Tie-downs, and Cleanup.

This Shot I was Responsible for:

All 2D Rough Animation and Tie-downs.

This Shot I was Responsible for:

Keys, Rough Animation, and Tie-downs.

This Shot I was Responsible for:

All Rough 2D Animation, Keys, and Tie-downs

This Shot I was Responsible for:

Keys and Tie-downs.

This was my favorite shot to work on in the whole film. In the first 3 clips shown in the video above, I did all of the Rough 2D Animation.

Diving into what makes this shot look and feel a little different than the rest, I approached it differently to the others from the start. As an example, I hatch shaded my rough keys as a test to see if my vision for this shot was viable with our production schedule. My original plan was to make our main character, Dougie, go from a cocky underachiever to menacing and competent. We did this through the use shading akin to what you'd see in an anime, to shape muscles, and exaggerate Dougie's head, face, and body. I think this shot turned out great, and I'm super proud what I did here!

The final clip (4th) in the video above is what the final version looks like in the finished film. It is just there to give you a comparison in how my process influenced the final film.

This Shot I was Responsible for:

Keys and Tie-downs.

This Shot I was Responsible for:

Keys, Rough Animation, Tie-downs, and Polish.

This Shot I was Responsible for:

Keys, Rough Animation, Tie-downs, and Lip-sync.

In these two shots above, I was mainly responsible for only the Facial Expressions and Lip-sync. By the time I was handed these shots, the body was already animated by the other animators (ex: Clips 1 & 4) and I was tasked with animating the face afterwards. 

Even though those bodies were animated by other animators on my crew, I decided to include the initial clips to demonstrate how I could take a blank face and give it character (ex: Clips 2, 3, 5, 6).

If you made it down here, thank you for taking the time to look at all my work. I hope you're able to feel the blood, sweat, and tears I poured into this project. If you'd like to look at even more of my work or follow me on my future endeavors check me out and follow me through these:

My Website

My Instagram

My LinkedIn

My Youtube

Also, check out my film's  website to see more amazing work by me and my crew!

Thank you again! 

-Elias Rosas

Okay last thing! Above was my first ever animation I did for this project back in September. Quite a long way I've come since then.