Victoria Vincent (aka @vewn), known for her previous ‘Mask Dog’ and ‘Bobo the Monkey’ SMALLS shorts as well as her work on ‘We the People’ and ‘Lazor Wulf,’ drops new film about a terribly sleepless night and getting roped into a sniper revenge plot.
Adult Swim has just dropped their latest SMALLS animated short, , from Victoria Vincent (aka @vewn).SMALLS features short form animated releases by up-and-coming creators from around the world, with new shorts released weekly on Adult Swim’s YouTube.
Vincent, who has amassed more than 1.5 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, is known for her previous SMALLS shorts and as well her work as a director on the Netflix animated series, and background designer on Adult Swim’s .Produced over 5 months using an energetic, slightly manic collage animation style (a dramatic understatement), the film stars PJ, who spends a sleepless night getting roped into a sniper revenge plot.And by sleepless, we really mean sleepless.
“I produced it by sitting at my desk for 10 hours a day drawing pictures until it was done,” Vincent shares.“Thankfully, I had my friend Lewis Tarver help me do inbetweens.I couldn't have done it without Lewis - he's awesome and makes his own short films too.” The story evolved from a very personal, frightening experience.
“A few summers ago, I was at a flea market when a shooting took place,” she explains.“I wasn't an eyewitness, but we all had to go on ‘lockdown’ in a nearby clothing warehouse until the police told us it was safe to leave.We all just sat there, quietly panicking, wondering if we were about to all get mowed down by an active shooter, while staring into our reflections in a nearby rack of sparkling holographic disco shorts.
A half-hour later, the police let us out.I never could find anything about the event in the news - it was like it never happened.But for a year after that, every time I walked past tall buildings, I would get an intense, panicky vision of a sniper peering over and firing at me.
I think the story of is a narrative manifestation of all these emotions and me trying to resolve them.” Enjoy the film, then read a bit about its production.But, please note, this short includes subject matter related to violence, suicide and mental health that could be triggering for some viewers.Vincent has made more than 20 animated shorts, with most taking place in similar locations: cities, apartments, and bathrooms.
“Everything looks the same,” she notes, “and frankly, I am tired of drawing these backgrounds.” Looking for inspiration to create something different, she nevertheless “tried to trick myself into thinking I was doing something new with the collage style, for my own sanity.I guess it worked because I didn’t have a total mental breakdown.A win is a win.” With an almost-fatalistic assessment of her career to date, at least as far as her solo filmmaking efforts, Vincent reveals her biggest challenge on the project was coming to grips with some sad realities about a solitary life spent making animated shorts.
“I used to think that making short films was a means to an end, and that one day, someone with a huge wallet would see my work and be like ‘that girl should make a real movie!’ and they'd give me 10 million dollars to make the greatest movie ever and I'd be like Stanley Kubrick but a girl.”
“But recently,” she continues, “I realized that's not how it works, and I could just be trapped in my bedroom forever, making these tedious short films by myself and posting them on social media for the rest of my life, never accomplishing anything ‘big’ or ‘important.’ It's been this disillusioning and existential feeling that caused me an immense lack of motivation during this process.And I think I learned something from working through it, or at least found a way to accept my fate, because I’m still willingly working on new short films, even if they never turn me into Kubrick-but-a-girl.”
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
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