Tics and Tricks

A guide to creating an animated short, the tourretic way.

Hello friends.

I write to you to spread the good word. A new-ish short. No, not a pair of shorts, but an animated short for A Studio Digital called Intrusive Pickle. Check it out, and keep reading to hear how the sausage pickle gets made.

@astudiodigitalIntrusive Pickle - Zack Smith #astudiodigital #animation #funny

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First of all, They spelt my name wrong. Ok, moving on.

Making animation is easy.

I’m joking; it is not, but for an endlessly busy-minded, obsessive-compulsive like me, it scratches a certain repetitive itch that can’t be scratched by drawing alone. I thought I’d share my process, but leave in the parts I usually leave out. I’ll leave in the flair!

Brain Background

I recently found out that I have Tourette’s Syndrome, which is a jargon-y way of saying I’M A TIC-MAN. I only recently tracked them all down on paper, took them to a doctor, and had him say, “Sounds about right.” My tics have always been here, a separate part of me. A different person reaching out to touch the wet paint I‘m not supposed to touch. To tap a foot on the grass, despite what the sign says. To push, prod, and pull my own muscles. To press my eyes. To jerk my head back. To twitch, whistle, squawk, and mouth trumpet during stressful moments. To boop the nose of an abusive ex while they’re screaming at me (Thank you, Tourette’s, sometimes you are a hero).

For me, with each stroke of my pen, I tic. I have a tic to hit undo. Stoke, COMMAND Z, Stroke, COMMAND Z, Stroke, COMMAND Z, and on and on. A tic to make something that looks too perfect more messy. An impulse to put gallows humor into a children’s cartoon. And based on the amount of cintiq pens I’ve broken, an urge to squeeze breakable things. I’m a boiling pot of echolalia randomly chirping out snippets of songs that repeat on end; The repetition brings a relief to my body that can only be described as: WHOOOOOOOOOOSH.

So I suppose this is the germ- or seed if I may —nay the nucleus of this idea I had for a story. Not intentionally - I just sort of vomited it out, then tried to make meaning of it later— actually, I’m making meaning of it right now, impulsively.

“I’m tightly wound. I’m a loose cannon. Both— I’m a tightly wound, loose cannon. A tight loose.”

Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn

But, like many Tourretters, creativity is my liferaft. It’s almost as much a part of me as my eyeballs. You seek creativity like a drug because creativity has the miraculous ability to melt the tics and thoughts away, carrying you to some phantasmagoric place where you float above it all, and everything is clear. Music, especially, can do this, which is why there are so many Tourretic musicians. Billie Eilish, Possibly Mozart, and Kurt Cobain all had Tourette’s. I was once a musician, and I guess, in a way, I still am. Music usually helps me come up with ideas; it brings on some kind of hyperfocused bliss. To quote Bill Murray from Zombieland, “This is why we do it.”

Anyway, the tics aren’t a huge deal, but the obsessions and intrusive thoughts are. They’re the enemy—the little chorus of squirrels pulling me away into a tree somewhere when I’m supposed to be doing something else. They’re also the savior, because without them, I wouldn’t see what I see, or do what I do.

BUT WE LOVE ‘EM FOLKS. WE LOVE THE SQUIRRELS. WE LOVE THE BOAT PARADES.

Letting go of the need to control my own mind and body is a constant struggle. To not argue with it, to accept it, the sit with it. In those moments, when I can let go of the struggle, my mind is free to wander, and I’m free to watch it work as a passive observer, amazed at how little control I have of my own faculties. This is usually when I wet myself (joke).

And so, this struggle led to this weird little short.

“So here is the happiness trap in a nutshell: to find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings, but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create”

Russ Harris, The Happiness Trap

PROCESS ENGAGE!

One place my tics die down is in nature, so I went for a hike with my dog, Homer. My mind went quiet for an hour or so. My hyperactivity did too. I was calm—so calm that I forgot about the brief period of indecisiveness over whether or not to pack a water bottle. I decided not to bring said water bottle, then got mad at myself halfway through the hike for not bringing it. I was thirsty.

My sweet precious nature sounds were interrupted by a nearby gun range. Birds chirping are interrupted by loud POP POP POP POPS. I put on a Spotify album of nature sounds to cover it up (this part is made up). I don’t usually listen to music while I hike, but this time, I put on the soundtrack to Koyanasquatsi by Philip Glass (PRETENTIOUSNESS ALERT). Suddenly, I became flooded with images, ideas, lines of dialogue, and music for a short all figured out. It was going to be about a man breaking up with a sentient jar of pickles that he believes to be his own mind. OF COURSE IT WOULD BE!

A post-hike vomit sketch

I finished the hike, writing in my notes app as fast as I could, then tried as hard as I could to hold the images in my memory. One thing about Tourrette’s is that it typically comes with a triad of other neurdivergencies, OCD+ADHD+Autistic traits, Your memory can be quite good for facts, patterns, and random trivia, but not so good in the short term. I held on to the image until I could get to the nearest sketchbook. I did stop at Taco Bell first, just to be completely transparent.

Here’s the typo-ridden note I wrote after the hike. I only put about 10% of this into the short, the medium changed, and I’m just now remembering the Carl Sagan stuff, that would’ve been cool.

And so a little while after writing this note and making some illegible sketches; A Studio Digital wanted me to pitch a short. In attempt to not overthink it, I pitched this one.

“In your mind there is a diamond sword.
If you want to understand yourself,
take it and cut off good and bad,
long and short, coming and going,
high and low, God and Buddha.
Cut off all things”

Seung Sahn, Zen Monk, Badass

Hyperfocus and you

Three weeks of hyperfocus and perseveration set in, “How’m I going to make this with such a low budget? It’s due soon. I need to cut things—ok, this one’s not going to be mixed media; it’s going to be done with some digital tools I already have. Where are my car keys? Who am I? What is my purpose in life? God, why have you forsaken me?” My kids stared at me, not knowing what to say (made up). I quickly jotted down some characters. Usually, my process here is to draw a bunch of semi-similar versions of a drawing without thinking. Another tourretic thing I do; it’s almost like it’s not me drawing the thing. It’s intuitive. I can’t explain it. I try not to worry about it too much. I eat lots of junk food, I pace around my house talking in the character’s voices out loud, I notice a neighbor in the window and get embarrassed, then, I write a crappy script based off of my notes app vomit. I say crappy because that’s the way it should be at this point; just a bunch of gibberish to go off of.

Ideations (like, preschool drawings but it sounds nicer).

Then, I start storyboarding it. In the storyboard, I rewrite. Once something becomes visual, the words matter less and it makes way more sense to me. I get caught up when there are too many words ahead of time and get stuck revising them, but it’s a visual medium, so I don’t see a point in making it perfectly worded.

After boarding, I spend most of my time putting in music, sound effects, and, yes, my own voice. But the timing is off, the performance sucks; I redo it hundreds of times (not an exaggeration). I improvise new parts while recording dialogue. And here’s what you get:

I like this better than the actual short because it was connected to the original song that inspired it. But, there was absolutely no way to get a license for the Philip Glass track or the Apple Junior voice. We had the composer at Bento Box, Rani Sharone, fix it up in the end; he was great. GREAT GUY!

Animating and stuff.

So, the final part of the process is actually animating it. I wanted it to feel as hand drawn as possible (something I often obsess over when making digital art). Instead of using rigging or tweens, I went for straight ahead frame by frame animation. This keeps it alive, gives it line boil, looks good sloppy, and most of all makes it human. I made backgrounds out of pictures of the travertine tile in my house. I painted on top of pictures of the universe. I like to mix in live-action elements, so this is the closest I could get without going too nuts. I was also pretty excited about making some special effects and compositing - YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY.

Ugly travertine tile makes for good background textures.

I was proud of the color in this one, ok?

Some effects I animated in plain old Procreate.

What I imagine it would feel like to be shot out of a cannon.

I finished it up, sent it to the editor, and waited to see how it would turn out. At this point, I realized the meaning of the short; although it was a weirdo comedy, it had a lot to do with my own brain and struggles with what Maria Bamford calls, “Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome”. You’re constantly playing wack-a-mole with your mind. Stopping the thoughts moles is impossible, you can’t control them, your brain just spits them out. The only way through is to let go. Unfortunately, when you let go, you don’t turn into a muscular man floating through space with no head, but I imagine that would be pretty cool.

AND SO IN CONCLUSION—Inspiration can strike anywhere. Often, I don’t wait for inspiration; I just start working. It usually doesn’t just come to me. It’s hard work. But when it does strike, I think it’s the best feeling in the world for an artist. It's almost a spiritual, non-logical thing that can’t happen at will. You just have to let it flow through you…like diarrhea (I’m sorry it was getting too serious). It strikes like lightning, and you have to catch it before it goes away. Until the next lightning strike, here’s this: