“A fun little thing” is a project I completed for a character animation class in university as part of my BA honours in Computer Arts. The characters, Detectives C.C. Tinsley and Ricky Goldsberg, are based off of the presenters of the online series “Buzzfeed Unsolved” which looks into supernatural stories and unsolved mysteries. I chose to use audio from the true crime episode “The Terrifying Axeman of New Orleans” where Shane and Ryan joke about enjoying stories about serial killers who have “a fun little thing”. The audio is funny and the men have exaggerated and animated ways of speaking which I felt worked really well for animating characters with expressive poses and expressions. The style is vaguely crime noir inspired to contrast with the comedy elements in the audio. 

Shane as the character C.C. Tinsley is the main character of the audio and because the audio is so comedic, I decided that Tinsley shouldn’t look too serious himself which then contrasts with Ryan’s character Ricky Goldsberg. Tinsley’s inappropriate Hawaiian shirt in the crime scene environment pushes him to seem like an eccentric rather than Goldsberg’s more serious and professional look. To me, Tinsley is a mix of X-Files’ Fox Mulder and BBC Sherlock’s Sherlock Holmes - someone who only gets away with being unprofessional and at times inappropriate because he is so good at his job. Goldberg in comparison feels like someone who is more fresh-faced and a somewhat jittery newcomer to the force who is starting to get used to Tinsley’s way of working and is starting to egg him on. 

The finished animatic was 76 frames long, including a title frame and credits frame. The pacing was too quick in the animatic due to not enough resting frames but the general thumbnails and character art was very useful for me to learn and I enjoyed the process.