Toilet Rat, An Animated Short

Rhett Carlin | Spring 2024

Created using Toon Boom Harmony, Photoshop, and Procreate in my fourth year at the University of Texas at Dallas under the direction of professor Todd Fechter of Escape Pod Animation. The assignment was to create a 6 second animation depicting an animal bounding in frame, performing an action, and then bounding out. The camera had to be static and formatted at 1080 x 1080, but otherwise we had creative freedom and 6 weeks to work.  
      I wanted to make something that stood out while still feeling elegant. I needed something silly that I could put a lot of character into, and, never missing the opportunity to resort to toilet humor, I came up with this curious rat that gets knocked into a toilet.  Through weekly critique, by both a peer group and professor during all stages of development, I created this sophisticated yet very silly animation.

   

      I usually try to infuse deeper meanings and themes into the work I do. It helps me connect with the subject at hand and can often give me a way to conceptualize a dynamic story. However, it was nice to work on something purely in celebration of its own silliness. I think it gave me an opportunity to really focus on selling a simple storyline with pure character and detail rather than using underlying metaphors to carry a pieces narrative. Overall, I’m very pleased with how the animation turned out, I think there are things that can be improved as always, but I feel it properly showcases many of my talents as an artist.

Outdoor Voices Rewards Animations

Rhett Carlin | Spring 2022

        

Created using Toon Boom Harmony, Photoshop, and Procreate. Outdoor Voices’ brand in February 2022 was heavily centered thematically on having a simple handdrawn feel. The idea was to convey a carefree and silly persona that felt approachable and nostalgic. Going off of this they wanted simple hand drawn animations for their rewards program doing a variety of actions like walking, hula hooping, jazzercise, etc. Prompts and characters for each were given, otherwise creative control was handed off to me. 

      These animations were used in promotional material and for the Outdoor Voicxes rewards program. Going through multiple stages of drafting, editing, and revisions, working directly under a creative director over a period of roughly two months. I was able to produce 16 unique animations, each with 3 variations in characters. 

     Overall, I was pleased with how the animations turned out, and I know they acoomplished the goal set out for them.