By Dixie

Making-of information & credits

My short film ‘Vying Vehicles’ is similar to the tale of the tortoise and the hare, but with less morals and more vehicles! To make this animation, I used Adobe Photoshop’s animation feature and hand drew each frame on my personal laptop. The frame rate is 24 fps and each drawing was done on ones for an extra smooth effect! I purposely used a lot of primary colours and flat backgrounds in this short to give it a ‘storybook’ feel. I chose to make my short film about vehicles since I wanted to push myself to give the illusion of life to a machine as complex and angular as a steam train, since my final college project was about aeroplanes (which are a lot easier to draw than trains)! The storyline depicts the competitive struggles of the train, who’s movement is limited to a track, and the plane, who can only fly in the air. Meanwhile, the car gets around the easiest with little struggle and wins the race! I used classical music since I have a slight obsession with cartoons that feature classical music, such as Tom and Jerry’s ‘Cat Concerto’ and the flooding shower scene from the Mario Movie! I just love the contrast of modern animation mixed with old tunes that everyone can recognise. The music I used for this short are Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka and the 12th Street Rag.