In a diner set in the ‘50s, a master thief must maintain her cool and her cover as a waitress while two ignorant detectives try to hunt down the mastermind behind last night’s diamond heist.
This past semester I have had the incredible pleasure of animating my graduation film together with my friend and classmate Nico Malarz. Our film, The Diamond Diner, is a 2D-animated short film about tunnelvision, gender bias and bumbling detectives. The film was animated in Toon Boom Harmony, with backgrounds in Blender. It was great to get more experience with the 2D-animation pipeline in a small-scale studio, and I’m very happy with how the film turned out!
Because we were a 2-person studio, I was able to try out a lot of roles during the various stages of production. We ended up co-directing and discussing a lot of matters to ensure we’d both be happy with the end result, but for the most part we adhered to the roles as follows:
Naomi (me): Writer, Asssistant Character Designer, Storyboard, Animatic, Lead Animation, Sound Design
Nico: Producer, Character designer, Background/3D Artist, Animation, Editing, Compositing
As we’re currently still sending it off to a handful of film festivals, I can’t share the full film just yet. However, if you want a sneak peek of the style we worked with, you can check out a promotional snippet from our school’s graduation show below! For some previews of the film’s character designs, check out our Instagram, @thediamonddiner.
I hope you enjoy, and perhaps I’ll see you all at film festivals for the full film ;).
Software used: Toon Boom Harmony & Blender