In December of 2006 I finished my first animation for which I wrote, animated, and directed … How To Put a Square Peg Into a Round Hole. It took me a couple of months in my spare time to complete. It probably would have taken me a couple of weeks if I had had the opportunity to work full-time on it.

I hadn’t made an animation of my own in years, since college, and those were very amateur … so I finally decided last year that I was going to make time to create one and have it done by the December 10th deadline for the KC Jubilee Film Festival. I had no idea what the story was going to be so I started brainstorming a bit and the old adage “square peg into a round hole” popped into my head. So I mulled it over some and then boom it entered into the foreground of my brain and I sketched the initial character and storyboard out on paper in about half an hour. Click on the thumbnail below to view the intial storyboard.

First Sketch & Storyboard for How To Put a Square Peg Into a Round Hole

Now I had something to work with! The next step was to create the character sheets. I created one for the main character,
who I named Gordon, and one for the Square Peg. I drew them up in Illustrator because one, I planned on animating in After Effects, and two, I like the brush styles you can get using Illustrator. Click on the thumbnails below to view the character sheets.

Gordon Character Sheet

Square Peg Character Sheet

Next, was to create a more polished storyboard. Once I went back and looked at the original sketched storyboard I decided to make a few changes and added in some voice-over. Click below to view the final storyboard.

Storyboard for How To Put a Square Peg Into a Round Hole

Then I finally got to animating … where things got refined just a little bit more. Once I had it pretty close to finished I needed to find someone to either create the music or find some canned music. Luckily I was able to find someone to create the music, Randy Skach of Western Automatic Music. I told him I wanted some silent film type music and he came through with flying colors. So the only obstacle I had left was the voice over. I called a guy in to do the voice over but once I edited it in I decided it was much better without … especially since I was using silent film type music. So I just re-edited a bit by adding in title cards like in the old silent films, got a co-worker to add in some sound effects and voila … done just in time to meet the KC Jubilee Film Festival deadline.

Unfortunately it didn’t make it in to the KC Jubilee Film Festival. But it got my butt in gear and now I’ve definitely got the itch to do another one. I’m also entering it into other film festivals … so I will keep ya posted. You can view the trailer below.

Click here to view the short film.