The Pre-production Design
Portfolio of Owain Hollett
A CRUNCH OUT OF BULLYING:
BOARDS
Precise Viewing:
Synopsis:
‘A Crunch Out of Bullying’ is a comedic parody of anti-bullying PSAs. It’s like an absurd 90s PSA scenario mixed with a fast-food commercial but it’s all played out raw. The plot goes like this:
An obese handicapped child finds his idols hanging out at a public basketball court, it’s the TacoBelch Super Squad - the athletic mascots of TacoBelch. To the kid’s surprise, their real-life personas aren’t quite as friendly when they’re off-screen. The tyrant, Cheeseballer doesn’t hold back on ripping on the boy’s looks despite his innocence. He humiliates him and tosses him out of the court, shattering his idolization. He returns to the court with anger, confidence and skill - proving the squad wrong with his talent.
Animatic / Storyreel:
Rough Thumbnails:
The Meaning - My PSA for Adults
This cartoon is about diminishing false icons and unrealistic messaging from the media. I based the protagonist on kids who form intense para-social bonds with fictional characters/celebrities. I related that behaviour to junk-food, how obsessing over media is unhealthy and restricts your ability to navigate in real-life. Similar to how people approach combating bullies through policing strategies, which prioritizes protection over growth.
Many choose to substitute that experience with cartoon morals and avoid the harsh outdoors where they become emotionally unfit to handle real conflict. I’m removing the safety net for those kids who are now adults— resilience is only earned through experience, not programming. This is my send off to fellow students entering the workforce.
TRAILER
Precise Viewing:
Synopsis:
After completing my film and graduating from art-school, I wanted to do one final segment to garner some attention for the official online release. A lighthearted send-off from school, as I now had the freedom to create whatever I wanted with the stuff I had learned.
To viewers' surprise, it was just a shocking one-minute segment of Cheeseballer taking a massive dump in the public washroom stall.
Animatic / Storyreel:
OTHER PROJECTS:
DESIGN
For an in-depth look at my design work (characters, layouts, props) - you get to see the decision-making progress on how the final visuals came to be and what needed to be scrapped.
FINAL ANIMATIONS
Film:
Garnering over 13k views on youtube, and winning best animation at Shit in the Dirt Film Festival, I consider this film a great success. With the help from my mentor, Jason Groh, who supported me throughout production, I was able to finish my film on-time without any further adjustments.
Trailer:
The trailer - which counts as its own prequel-counterpart to the original - was created in response to the pushback I received for directing toilet-humor jokes at school. I now had unshackled freedom of expressing the notoriously relatable bathroom experience after consuming TacoBell.
REFLECTION
Areas for Improvement
The main issue I have with this cartoon is its audio. Sound design is the area I tend to neglect yet highly acknowledge its importance. Due to time restrictions I had to stick with my messy and low quality scratch track for all my voice lines. I didn’t bother searching for voice actors to fulfill those rolls because I’m too picky, busy, and broke to get a performance that was both funny and improvised. So I settled on my own rough take and tried improving it the best I could with sound effects in post- which resulted in an overwhelming and distracting effect.
Production Limitations
There’s lots of things I wish I could have done with more time and a budget. For instance, I wanted to shoot my own live action scene at the very end where the wheelchair kid- now aged up and handsome, sensually eats a crunchwrap. I settled on ripping a scene from a Kali Muscle mukbang video at the last minute because I didn’t have the free time to shoot.
I even think the wheelchair kid would have been better suited in live action. I believe it would have made the film a lot funnier seeing a real life kid getting bullied by a cartoon, and enhanced the overall theme of battling against fantasy.
