How To Quit Smoking - Props and Design

This short was something I wanted to feel at home with the filmstrips that I only vaguely remember from elementary school. We had a lot of beautifully muted color schemes, bold fonts and infographics that we wanted to incorporate into the movie with an eye toward the silly. In our early brainstorming sessions, my associate producer Marc played a key role in getting the design of our project just right. Within just a few minutes Marc whipped up this cigarette box in Photoshop.

Marc's role in production was shrunk due to outside obligations, but he set me on the right path to making the rest of the digital props we needed. To make this movie feel higher budget than it was, I added many visuals through both Photoshop and After Effects. Researching the ridiculous history of cigarette ads (and any ads really) from the mid 20th century, I had a lot to work with when I came up with these full page ads. 

I needed to make a social media page for our hero Donny Don't to mess around on, so I whipped this one up for a later scene.

Last but not least, we needed some White Horse Heroin, and I used After Effects to put this together. 

These and many other little bits and pieces are on screen for all of three seconds each, but as a lifelong disciple of The Simpsons, I learned the value of filling the frame with jokes. With so many distractions available to all of us all the time, I love the thought that I might catch someone's eye and then BAM! hit 'em upside the head with comedy.

Next time, we'll dive into the animation process