Piñata
A short film made in 48 hours
In April 2024, I participated in the annual Cardiff Quick Draw challenge to make a short film in 48 hours.
The prompt this year was ‘Treat’.
It was announced at Friday 7pm and I had until Sunday 7pm to create and deliver a short film – no pressure!
This film is about a Piñata being more than meets the eye. And asks the question of what is going on underneath the colourful paper.
This was a lot of fun to make. It pushed me out of my comfort zone to make something uncomfortable in the Horror genre, though it’s not what I set out to do, but I latched on to the first strong idea I had and ran with it.
Special thanks to Richard Jackson / JacksorJacksor for providing the incredible (and disturbing) sound design and supporting me through the project.
I hope you enjoy what I have made, but maybe don’t watch this with any children…
Stats
Quickdraw 2024 theme: Treat
Start: 7pm Friday 12th April
End: 7pm Sunday 14th April
97 Teams took part from around the world
47 films submitted in 48 hours.
A showing of all 47 films was screened back-to-back online and in the Chapter Arts Cinema as part of the Cardiff Animation Festival 2024.
Credits
- Direction and Animation by Matthew Creed
- Sound Design by Richard Jackson / JacksorJacksor
- Cardiff Quick Draw
- Cardiff Animation Festival
Behind the scenes
If you’d like to see how I tackled the challenge, I have made a video that provides an insight into my process, including how I came up with my idea, how I managed my time and the decisions I made to make a film.
Storyboard
Time was of the essence for this challenge, so it was imperative that time was spent on pre-production to figure out if the idea was worth investing in over the weekend.
This is one of the storyboard pages. It’s very rough, but it was enough to help me visualise the idea and take it further.
Concept Art
The Piñata monster is the key element to this film. This was the concept art I drew for what I was aiming for.
To the left of the monster is a sketch figuring out how the monster would be constructed as a rig I could animate.