Protection-Bunny Ears Cactus (Indoor)

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Protection-Bunny Ears Cactus (Indoor) is an animation, with original score, about resilience, self-actualization, and the freedom that comes through being one’s own protector amidst unprecedented challenges.

The animation is based on Protection-Bunny Ears Cactus (Outdoor), a cut paper work that Bovey Lee made in response to the recent upsurge in harassment and violence against AAPI.

Director and cut paper artist - Bovey Lee

Animator, sound designer, and editor - Matthew McLaughlin

Score composer and musician - Jarod Yap

Above, the original piece Protection-Bunny Ears Cactus (Outdoor) by Bovey Lee, a cut paper artist based in Los Angeles, CA.

Ms. Lee and I discussed the plot line of the piece and I produced the below storyboard in Adobe Photoshop using a scan of the original art piece.

Once the storyboard was finalized, I created an animatic to get the rough movement and story beats down. Below is an example of one of the iterations of the animation.

As the animation was being finished, Ms. Lee brought in Jarod Yap to write the original score. I layered in the score along with a city soundscape I created and bird songs at the end (all clips from freesound.org). I also added video clips of Hong Kong and Los Angeles (two primary residences of Ms. Lee's) as well as cloud video along with paper grain to give the background more depth and meaning.

Ms. Lee also asked to have a promo/behind the scenes video which is included below. Some animation had to be created specially for this video including the closing shot of the full piece and the "in progress" visible-handles-style footage.