Océane Fairbanks

Demo Reel 2024

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

Senior 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

Artist Statement

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.

Process

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.

Breaking The Frame

Breaking the Frame was an assignment for the course Compositing for 2D at Ringling College. I recreated my favorite shot from Days of Heaven (1978) in a mid-century illustration style.

Learning Outcomes

Perform a screen replacement using core matte + soft matte keying techniques. Roto tools should be used to make an element from the animation break the screen's boundary.

Breakdown

12 Prinicples Explainer

This is a simple explainer video demonstrating the 12 Principles of  Animation.  When defining our design language, my team prioritized minimizing the number of properties that needed to be animated, enhancing the team's ability to iterate and address notes as quickly as possible.

Learning Outcomes

Demonstrate sophisticated application of the 12 Priciples of Animation. Create a MoGRT template file for the interlude titles.

Design and Animation

Audrey Nixon, Emily Sager, Yuki Li, and Océane Fairbanks

Titles

Océane Fairbanks

Shots I worked on