Sep 25, 2019

How Did They Do It? Blending 2D Animation, Archival Materials, and Ice Sculpture in Shannon Amen

Thirteen years passed between the suicide of Chris Dainty's best friend, artist Shannon Jamieson, and the completion of Dainty's film about her life, "Shannon Amen."

Much has happened in that time. The Ottawa, Canada-based filmmaker teamed up with his wife, Jennifer, to start Dainty Productions, a 2D commercial animation studio. He became involved in ice sculpting, which led him to experiment with stop-motion animation of his own sculptures. During that time, the idea of making a film about Shannon simmered inside him, and in 2014 he pitched it to the National Film Production Board of Canada. They accepted, and Dainty began developing his first independent short film.

His challenge was how to approach his friend's own art. She left behind paintings, pastels, ink, copy prints, pencil sketches, poetry, digital art, music, journals, and videos. In her work, she often returned to erotic and religious imagery, confronting the unbearable conflict between homosexuality and Christian faith. These themes were inseparable from her art, and her sincere tributes to life had to be both.

Initially, Dainty painted multiple versions of Shannon, each attempting to represent a different art style and era of her life. However, as he told Cartoon Brew, "It became confusing to the audience as to who was who." He refined his hybrid approach and ultimately decided to tell her story through a combination of 2D animation, ice sculptures, and her own work. He said, "I tried to set a style for Shannon that would fit the perspective we were looking at: 2D animation (the person I knew), ice (her inner life), and photos and videos that inserted her own raw point of view into the story.

The creative process behind these three elements is presented below as an edited transcript of an interview conducted via email. Shannon Amen premieres tomorrow at the Ottawa International Animated Film Festival.

Karen: Shannon left behind a vast art collection. It was easy to lose oneself in all of it. Before she passed away, she gave me a large number of digital photos from our artistic collaborations and adventures, and I knew they would be important in the film. Shannon's mother, Ellie, also helped me examine the physical art. Everything I found was sacred, and emotionally, I felt like I was slowly getting to know Shannon in a new way.

In the process, I discovered a lot of art. One of the most striking was a charcoal drawing on paper. It was based on a photo of her and her then-girlfriend in an old barn. It had been drawn under her direction for her art project. I was so happy when I found this piece. The photo shoot I did for her in the barn is featured heavily in the film [see clip below]. I was able to use this piece to further the story by transitioning from the photographs I took to the artwork she created and then animating that artwork.

I tried to make sure that Shannon's art was the driving force behind the film and reviewed it many times to find the best way to incorporate as much art as possible. Working with producer Malal Mohammadian and line producer Jennifer Dainty was absolutely critical.

Chris Dainty: We used 2D animation as a way to bridge everything and bring everything together narratively. The film is a mixture of reality and memory, and we felt that a bold, saturated color scheme would convey this feeling. Shannon's work was often bold as well.

Izzy Campbell played an important role in creating the look of the 2D animation. After each 2D scene was animated, Izzy cleaned it up and digitally colored each individual frame. This took an inordinate amount of time, but the results were beautiful and the consistent style created with this technique was perfect for the film.

Every frame of the 2D animation incorporated Shannon's artwork in some way. After the animation was colored, I had Elise Simard add the texturing after the coloring was done. Shannon's artwork was scanned in at high resolution and the textures were digitally applied to the characters. Some scenes were animated from her artwork.

Dainty: In 2015, I worked with ice sculptor Kevin Ash to carve a tree composed of human bodies for the International Winterlude Competition. Carving the human form in ice is one of the most difficult things to do, but the experience gave us the confidence that we could create a life-size human body sculpture of epic proportions for this film.

We used a special ice machine with a continuous stream of water, which allows the ice blocks to appear crystal clear. It takes 65 hours to freeze a block of ice in the machine, and each block weighs 300 pounds. We sculpt the ice in a huge walk-in freezer, where we also store the finished sculptures. The length of time varied depending on the order in which they were made, but they all took from 3 to 6 hours per sculpture. I think we used about 60 blocks in all.

The biggest challenge was ice breaking. We wrapped all the sculptures in plastic wrap and secured them so they wouldn't fall over and break during transport. Fortunately, only one head and one arm broke. Another challenge was to finish the filming before the ice began to melt. The filming took place over two nights, about two months apart, and both were in winter temperatures. The purpose was to redefine the details of the faces, which were slowly being lost as the ice melted. They also used water, a natural glue, to repair some of the broken pieces.

Dainty: Traditional animation was done on paper or digitally using Adobe Animate, Harmony, or TVPaint, depending on the animator's preference. The animation was cleaned up and flat layers created by Izzy Campbell in Adobe Animate CC. The next step was to add textures from Shannon's artwork to the animation, which was done by Elise Simard in After Effects. Photoshop was used for the background. Dragonframe was used for the ice and special effects were done in After Effects. All birds were hand painted with thick black gel paint, put together in Adobe Animate, and composited in After Effects.

Watch this short making-of documentary to see how the film was made: