THE FILM

‘Neko No Hi’ is a 2D-animated short film by animation director and illustrator Jon Frickey.

In the film, the protagonist, Jiro, gets diagnosed with cat flu, an unharmful disease. It however is a disease which only cats can have, therefore Jiro’s identity gets questioned.

While Frickey made this film to address identity crisis and struggling with gender, it inspires me because to make this topic visual he used a connection between human and animal. As the doctor says Jiro is a cat, his father tries to get him to connect with other cats, but this does not work at all. There is this fake connection going on, everyone seems to believe the doctor as she states Jiro is a cat, everyone but Jiro himself. Since he is in charge of his own life, he cannot simply be something because others expect him to be so, when he’s not. Jiro knows he is not a cat, therefore this connection between him and cats is not real.

Frickey uses a rather realistic style of animation and bringing into picture, together with simple visuals and bold use of color. To me this makes his story even more powerful. The minimalism makes it so that the viewer does not get distracted from what’s the core of the story. It makes it easier to discover the layers in the film and therefore makes the story more accessible.

This fake connection returns in my film as well. In my work I portray a one sided friendship between a young boy and a colony of frogs. The young boy, who is the protagonist of my film, thinks he actually is a frog and sees the frogs as his peers. However, the frogs see him as a threat. With my film I want to try and reach the goal of accessibility and discovering different layers in the film in a similar way as Frickey does. I want my work to educate in an artistic and playful way.

Frickey J., Cat Days, 2018.

The best world possible

Animal Farm is a 2D-animated drama film directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor, and it is based on the 1945 novel of the same name by George Orwell. The novel as well as the film is a political satire and shows how humans are the higher power oppressors whilst animals are the ones who organize and resist. Animals are given human characteristics, expressing themselves in portraying human emotions, speaking and writing a human language and doing human activities (like tic-tac-toe, building a windmill to generate electricity, trading etc.). It is an inspiration to me as this is the opposite from what I want my film to portray. I want to have the human try (and fail) to copy the animal’s behavior and the animal will not show any human like emotions or engage in human activities.

The pigs are in this film portrayed as the second kind of humans, trying to overrule and overpower other animal species. To me this film says that there can be no-one in charge and rule while still having every species be equal. It will always result in another revolution with someone else grasping power to overrule. I like this way of storytelling a lot, because it raises the question of the possibility of an ideal world. It’s the first thing mentioned in the film, as the narrator starts with the following sentence:

“To the world we all know, which may or may not be the best world possible, once again spring time had come.” - Halas, J., Batchelor, J. “Animal Farm”, 1954.

Animal Farm - Halas, J., Batchelor, J. & Orwell, G. (1954)

I want to implement the written script in this paper as well, as it shows how my arguments and ways of thinking translated into the final product.

In my story the protagonist, a young boy called June, thinks he is doing good when it comes to human values, but is actually portraying very harmful actions to the frog characters in the film. I first show June doing unintentional harm to the frogs and then let it get back to him by getting caught up in having a fake connection to the frogs, which becomes fatal to him. It’s a film that shows not the strength, but the vulnerability of the human being.

Besides that it is a game of who is the parasite and who is the host. The frogs are invading June by literally entering his body, but June is also invading the frogs' habitat. It is a continuously changing structure, but in the end the frogs ‘win’. They are the ultimate parasite.
The film consists of three different acts which divide up the story in three crucial moments. The first act shows my protagonist eating a tadpole. The second act portrays how he gets parasitically taken over by the frogs, whilst he himself experiences this as ‘turning into a frog’. He enjoys it. The last act brings into picture how the protagonist ends up losing himself in this frog fantasy, whilst also losing this physical battle that was going on between him and the tadpole he swallowed. The frogs take over his body, June passes away.

* For the graduation project, I will only animate and produce act three. This is because of a lack of time and reduced workflow due to CoVid-19.

ACT 1

The story starts with June playing around a pond. He’s moving the end of a stick through the water of the pond as he sees something moving. It’s a group of tadpoles, at least 10 of them. June manages to quickly grab one. Not sure what to do with it now he carefully holds it. Out of sheer curiosity, he eats it. The tadpole enters his body and June starts transforming. The animation will go over in abstract animation for a short period of time, portraying this transformation.
We then go back to reality, where we see a shocked and guilty-looking June. He realizes what he did was wrong. He then looks up to see a big frog sitting on the side of the pond. They stare at each other.

ACT 2

June is convinced that he is now also a frog, as he has one growing inside of him. He also feels like he has to make up for what he did, knowing it was wrong. He keeps visiting the pond. You can see him feeding the frogs by bringing his entire bug collection to them. He wraps them in blankets before he goes away etc. Thinking he is doing good, he is actually severely harming the frogs by doing this (which will not be visible in the film, it is for the audience to figure out themselves). Frogs will eat as much as they have in front of them, they cannot stop themselves and can therefore eat until they get severely sick. Putting them in blankets harms their skin, which they use to breathe and absorb water through. Without realizing it, he is putting his new ‘friends’ in danger.

At one point a frog goes swimming, June tries to follow it by putting his head under water. Again an abstract animation will follow, this time lasting a little longer. Here we see how June is being chased by a frog in the making. Shocked June removes his head from the water.

ACT 3

On a cold day June returns to the pond. He stands in front of the water and looks down, not seeing any frogs around. His glass bottles with bug names labeled on it are left empty, as well as his blankets. The frogs have fled from him.
June looks for frogs for a while, then proceeds to strip his clothes and dives in the water. He ends up drowning himself, trying to find his friends.

The last abstract animation and therefore transformation starts, in which his head grows legs and hops off his body. His head, now a frog, swims away, while his body lays in the water.

We go back to reality and June laying in the water, motionless. A black liquid is coming out of his neck. As the camera viewpoint changes it turns out it’s not liquid at all, but hundreds of tadpoles exiting his body. The frog we saw at the beginning, which is the father of the spawn, is sitting at the side of the pond again, observing the scene.

Character Descriptions

June

June is the protagonist of the film. He’s a 5 year old human child, who has a very playful and curious nature. He collects bugs and other small creatures as a hobby.

He’s been playing around this pond for a while now. He notices the tadpoles and eats one out of sheer curiosity. It’s the kind of thing young kids do when they’re young, to explore and understand new things. What does it feel like? What does it taste like?

He’s the only human character in my film. I want him to be the outnumbered one. Next to that he’s an infant. It’s most suiting for him to be because of the following argument:
“... humans are born instinctually deprived. (...) The reason for this underdevelopment is that we are cultural creatures. We are instinctually underdeveloped at birth so that our every thought, feeling, action and relationship can be culturally informed.” (Allan, 2006, p. 39)
This also is the reason behind my film being targeted at a young audience of infants from the age of 5 till around 10. Often their thinking is shaped by their environment, in which anthropocentric behaviour is often normalized. I hope to denormalize this and offer children a space to think freely when it comes to this subject.

After June eats the tadpole he is convinced he is turning into a frog, which he totally enjoys. However, the frogs are like an imaginable parasite, taking over his brain and body. From eating tadpoles you can actually get parasitic infections.

Father Frog

There’s a frog who first appears in the film after June has eaten the tadpole. When seeing it he figures it’s the mama of the baby he just ate. He therefore leaves the others alone. He’s intimidated by its stare.
The frogs in my film are not an existing species. I have given it a characteristic of the African Bullfrog. With African Bullfrogs it’s always the male frog who watches over the spawn. After the spawn has turned into tadpoles, the male digs small tunnels to help them move from small water into bigger water. In my film, June serves as one of his tunnels. Leading the tadpoles into a new area.
June mistakes the frog for a female, when it’s actually a male. This is because he’s used to his mother doing the caretaking in his home situation.

Frogs

The frog characters in my film live together as a group, which is often called a colony. They spend most of their time outside of the water, but stay around the pond at all times. June will harm the frogs' living space by doing things he thinks are good. He overfeeds them (frogs won’t stop eating until there’s no more food left, which can cause them to become severely ill). And harms their skin by putting them in blankets (they use their skin to absorb drinking water and oxygen). They become scared of June and hide whenever he’s there during the last part of my film.

A Research Document and Animated film by Femke Janssen

I’m telling my story through the medium of animated film. Animation has always offered me a way to visualize and create alternate universes, worlds in which I can exaggerate the bad to emphasize the need for the good. In this project I do that by having my protagonist, a young human character, die at the end of the film. It’s shocking and might be a bit scary for a target audience of children, but I leave out the gore and don’t put the emphasis on death itself. It’s an abstract and poetic way of asking for change.

When discussing my film it is important to look at sources of inspiration. These often offer me a guideline of how to visualize things in a strong and accessible way. In the following two examples the themes are very similar. Both are addressing topics through exploring the relationship between human and animal. Where ‘Animal Farm’ focuses more on political issues, ‘Cat Days’ addresses an identity crisis.