Beyond the Walls: An Animation Pilot
An Overview
A brief introduction to the story of Beyond the Walls!
In an alternate, future timeline, humanity has become detached from nature…
Living amongst the clouds, no human has touched the ground in centuries since the Incident. Until Robin, a young woman traveling between the floating Sanctuaries, falls into the middle of the jungle. It’s taken some adjusting walking on the ground, but nothing seems out of the ordinary from what we’d recognize in 2021. Some trees, a lot of dirt, a couple of talking animals— wait, talking animals???
Their sophistication is astounding… strikingly human even, but all is not well in this wilderness. In self-awareness comes morality, and morality often walks a thin line, especially within the complexity of the human mind. The world has changed in more ways than one since the Incident, but these questions— the Sanctuaries, the animals, the mysterious pendant that glows around Robin’s neck— can all be answered by the truths hidden in past, locked within the roots of the jungle, and guarded… Beyond the Walls.
Meet the Main Cast!
Robin, Voice by Melanie Cohen
Achaya, Voiced by Dylan Jonas
Empi, Voiced by Ben Spizuco
Geyer, Voiced by Jack Ramina
Meet the Creator!
Dylan Jonas
“You can learn anything, so long as you know what to do, how to do it, and are willing to make it happen.”
About Dylan:
Dylan Jonas is animator, digital artist, and graphic designer with a B.A. in Interactive Multimedia. Dylan has worked over the years to hone his skills in 2D and 3D animation, with a primary focus in character and creature animation. He is recognized for his strong skills in 3D modeling, audio mixing, and video editing.
Connect or Contact me here:
Like my stuff? You can follow my progress/works through these media links below:
What is this Project?
Beyond the Walls (*may the name be subject to change!*) is a traditional digital 2D animated pilot episode for an upcoming serial web-based series for young adults. It follows the protagonist, named Robin, as she traverses the wilderness with animal companions as they help her return to the aerial cities she came from. However, there’s more to their adventure than just getting Robin home safely. Throughout their journey, they’ll meet friends and foes, uncover mysteries lost in the past, and rekindle humanity’s connection with nature.
A short video of a roughly animated fight scene in Act 3 of the pilot episode. Mostly digital, hand drawn animation, with some instances of tweened interpolation. Animated in Blender. The full version intends to finish this as a fully drafted scene, rounding out at around a minute of footage.
Inspirations & Vision:
You can think of this story as a hybrid mix between Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (or at least the screen adaptations, anyways…), with the world’s tonal setting taking a little inspiration from the 2012 TV drama series, Zoo.
With many movies and films, this story starts off with an idea, a question of sorts!
Beyond the Walls pitches the question of “what if animals had a sense of human morality?” It makes for an interesting discussion, as the human mind is complex, conflicted in ideals of what’s right and what’s wrong. Put this into the context of animals who live in a lawless spectrum of chaotic balance. In the course of our history on the planet, humans changed their environment to their liking, and this brought positive and negative effects to the planet today. Now, what if animals had the same capacity to knowingly change the environment like we do? If they weren’t restricted by instinct or mindful of the repercussions, they could seriously tear up the environment if they really wanted to. This story intends to explore how they’d might shape the world if they adapted like humans, and how that mirrors our ourselves in our own relationship with nature.
A Productive Journey
The previous title reflects the title of the book’s version, referred to as Beyond My Walls. I like to have any title for my works have meaning in some way. Beyond My Walls was an indicative tie-in to the story, different character arcs, and plot points that played throughout it. It looks cool on paper… but it does sound a little too personal in the context of a screen adaptation. Even though she’s the protagonist, we won’t be seeing everything exclusively from Robin’s eyes— she’s just our main human perspective and anchor in this world inhabited by talking animals. This story has a huge host of characters to explore, who all have a “tail” to tell! I’m always open to name suggestions, so if you’d like, you can help vote on one or pitch an idea in this Google form here!
Beyond My Walls or Beyond The Walls?
Fun Fact!
This project is actually adapted from an (unpublished) novel that I wrote! Promotion and documentation of the project earlier in the semester used a slightly different name, so to keep relative consistency, the title has been change to Beyond the Walls, although this is likely subject to change in the future after thesis.
An old, conceptual logo design!
Challenges, Overarching Problems, and Solutions?
The Scope:
Alright, so I’ll say it now. This is a big project. It was aimed to span around 15 minutes in length. I’m not sure how, but earlier versions ranged up to 30-40 minutes! It’s a massive undertaking, but I believe that it’s still achievable. I set out to produce 15 minutes of footage, and ironically I did, just not in the way I expected. All the audio/recordings are there, but its still a long way to go for getting the actual animation finished and polished. That being said, I think it genuinely depends on the assets you already have at your disposal that can make or break your production speed.
Animation can be divided into several different jobs outlets when bringing an entire project together. On top of your animator(s), you have your storyboard and concept artists, background painters, and audio mixers, and that’s just to name a few! It’s kind of daunting to be managing all of that on your own. Needless to say, I’ve come away with a ton of knowledge and insight exploring different departments within the production pipeline, from concepts and storyboarding, to script writing and audio mixing and, of course, the animation production itself!
The Software:
It’s important to have tools you’re familiar with so you can focus on what you’ve actually set out to do as much as possible. There are so many different animation programs out there, and once you learn one, transitioning to another is relatively manageable. My only issue was my go-to program for animating, Adobe Animate was no longer compatible with my machine (being stuck in the limbo that is updating Windows 10), which prompted me to learn and experiment with several different animation programs over this entire academic year. I didn’t exactly have access to industry programs like Toon Boom Harmony, so I had to stick to free/open-source software or whatever I had still accessible in the Adobe Cloud.
Programs like Photoshop and Krita were either too tedious in workflow or didn’t have developed enough mechanics to help me produce content at a considerable pace. I reintroduced myself to Blender, which in recent years has become very adept at importing 2D animation into a 3D space. This allowed me to speed up production process in some areas, which was a huge boost for me and this project! Blender isn’t the end-all-be-all, of course, but for what it offers, it certainly presents itself as a reliable jack-of-all-trades program (how IMM-friendly!) for producing animation at a reasonable speed! It certainly helped me get to where I am now with my project, and I can’t be thankful enough for it!
Directing an Animation:
This animation does feature a voice cast, and this ensemble is almost as large as this pilot is long! This presented a new challenge for me in the form of acting direction. I’m familiar enough with the theatre scene, having a background in acting myself, yet I’ve never thought I’d actually get the chance to direct a film so soon. I was pretty open with my cast, letting them play around with the script to give their own interpretations of the characters, granted the biographies I had written out in the script to use as reference. I think giving them that freedom really let them get creative and make a character of their own as much as they existed on paper. I honestly think my voice actors meshed with my characters’ personalities quite swimmingly, a well-casted ensemble! Despite that, the story does have some elements that I could have made a little clearer from the start (for example, there is a fictional language system with phonetics that might be hard to grasp at first), but I’m still happy with how all the recordings turned out! Hearing all my characters speaking for the first time really hit home with me and was a truly surreal experience.
The COVID Situation:
Strangely enough, I hadn’t had to much trouble adapting to these unprecedented times, but this is just from my experience from working remotely. Most of the work I do was already done from my laptop, and I had all my required externals tools with me (a stylus, a drawing tablet, a sketchbook, a couple of USBs, and my imagination!) in personal inventory. The only problem I was really presented with was figuring out how to get my voice cast’s performances recorded. Not everyone was on campus, and not everyone has the best recording space, myself included. Ironically, I just had everyone record on the own time and send their takes to me over email and other media or the course of February, and edited them together in March. Thankfully everything went smoothly. I also had the use of apps like Audacity, which allowed me to fix any hiccups in the audio where I could, mixing them down to files I could import easier into my project!
The Development Process:
Drawing: Bringing Characters To Life
It’s ironic to say as an animator, but I often get caught up in my own work. Is this action believable? Does my art look good? How do you even draw the human hand?! Animals and creature design has always been a focal point in my drawings. I love capturing the charisma that naturally flows through their anatomy and finding ways to characterize those features on screen. Reference is a great friend, and I’ve been using a lot of it for drawing many of my characters, often using pictures of animals as a “drawing” point (haha) to get a sense of their shape, anatomy, and how I can play around with how they’ll move and behave.
You can see these in the concepts of other character from the pilot below! The story of Beyond the Walls features a plethora of animal characters. To help better visualize their designs, I typically sketched out a realistic version from reference, and then played with characterization from there!
These characters are in the pilot episode, and will make their appearances in the animation as it becomes more developed! In fact, you can hear their voices in the pre-show screenings!
Any Collaborative Efforts?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve worked on the majority of the project by myself. I am the writer, the animator, and the sound designer of Beyond the Walls. Outside of the wonderful voice cast who breathed life into the characters, it was just me, myself, and I throwing a hand into this ambitious endeavor, and there was certainly a lot of juggling between the positions working on this animation!
Needless to say, I’m still happy with what I managed to get done, and since I’ll won’t be restricted by time after thesis, this lends me the opportunity to explore that more! I’m always eager to collaborate with others on projects. Just be prepared for big, ambitious ideas ahead!
Extensive Pursuits? Anything Left Out?
While the actual animation is the only goal I have left to do, there was a fair bit of extra content that I would have liked to produce, had I had more time. There were plans to incorporate soundtracks and character themes, an opening and closing sequence with credits, and even a cinematic trailer! I really wanted to make this feel like an the debuting of an animated episode, but again, there just wasn’t enough time. Maybe if I had my pre-production assets completed, say before February, then maybe I could have reached more milestones. Yet the future is unpredictable, and things happen, be it happy accidents, or bumps in the road that demand of you to retrace your steps.
I’ve come to learn that when working on big projects by yourself, it’s imperative to have all your ducks in a row if you’re starting from scratch with the aim to get everything done. I understand now why there are whole teams working on animation projects instead of single individuals. Would I do it all over again? Let’s just say… I have a feeling that this project is only the beginning!
Programs and Tools:
Along with my handy, dandy Wacom tablet and stylus, several digital applications went into the making of this project, encompassing storyboarding, concept art, promotional art, audio mixing, video editing, and the core animating itself. It was a hefty load of back-and-forth between importing and exporting through each program. A lot of this couldn’t have been done without these wonderful tools!
Animation/Art & Concept/Storyboarding:
What comes next?
Professional Goals?
From a professional perspective, I really wanted to showcase my skills in character animation as well as the knowledge I’ve acquired working in several of these programs that brought this project to life. I realized that I’ve built quite the repertoire from going through other aspects of the production pipeline thoroughly. I’m more confident than ever as a storyboard artist, a position I hadn’t considered going into before I started this project!
This project also gives me a chance to just tell a fun, quality story. Some might say that’s a rarity today, and even its rarer to have so much time and creative liberty to be able make a project like this. While this pilot does serve as a pitch for a potential series, I’m not aiming for this particular IP to get picked up by a company like Disney or Pixar, but to rather showcase my abilities in animation and storytelling.
Creative Goals?
From a creative perspective, this project is made out of passion as much as it is a deliverable for thesis. While I was unable to complete this production marathon with a more polished version of the animation, the writing and story for this pilot is complete, and I do aim to finish this project in the coming months. In fact, I most certainly plan to turn Beyond the Walls into a series, likely to be uploaded to my YouTube channel, and if it gets popular enough, maybe I’ll explore branching out it’s development in other ways, so stay tuned!
Contact Me!
Want to reach out with any questions? You can message me with the emails below and we’ll have a chat!
dylan.w.jonas@gmail.com
jonasd1@tcnj.edu