Aoife Beniston

With storyboarding, as well as being one of two storyboard artists for my main film Chaos, I have worked on two personal projects: an outdoor promotion video and Tarans. The outdoor promotion video is for Willowgate Activity Centre, highlighting its newest activities as well as the most enjoyed activities, such as highland games, combat archery, and paddle boarding. As someone who is passionate about the outdoors, I challenged myself to create an animation/live-action trailer for an adult audience interested in such activities, attempting to make the shots as energetic and exciting as possible. Tarans was an investigation into the dramatic storytelling of Tarans (a Scottish folktale of unbaptized dead children whose souls, in some versions, became stars). Inspired by the Cartoon Saloon's folklore style, I attempted to look into the theatrical side of storytelling.

2D effects have been just as varied as the subjects in storyboarding, from creating stars falling from the sky to icing exploding in the hands of a frustrated chef. The projects I have been helping with have allowed me to work with realistic effects (water, fire, liquids) to more magical and abstract shapes (star trails, blast of light, shifting plants). I find that 2D FX animation can be described as ‘the icing on the cake’. The scene could do without the effects, but those subtle movements allow the audience to suspend their belief further as they are whisked away into the story.