Flightless

June 2025

Krita and Wondershare Filmora

Flightless is a digitally produced, 24fps animation created in Krita, a software that enables efficiency during animation production in duplicating and moving aspects of a frame, as well as allowing for colouring with the paint bucket tool. Flightless was animated using a pose-to-pose method by blocking out key frames first, allowing for greater control in the structure and timing of the animation as a whole. Before any work on individual frames was done, the entire animation was storyboarded with rough sketches in order to ensure the animation would accurately tell a story. Storyboarding first originated in the 1930s and was used by Walt Disney Studios, however, similar processes of blocking have also existed within theatre, ballet, opera, and film since as early as the late 19th century. Theatre blocking is said to have first been used by “Victorian dramatists like Gilbert and Sullivan”, who made miniature stages to better visualise their productions.

This animation was designed to have significant appeal in the use of a consistent and cohesive colour palette while also utilising a simple art style. The appeal of this animation is additionally aided by my previous digital drawing experience and personal interest in dragons, allowing my subject to be drawn with accurate anatomy and form, which assists in creating a solid and consistent drawing that carries through the animation. This solidity can be seen primarily in the dragon’s shape as it breathes and as it walks across the room. Throughout the animation, slight bounce effects were used in the dragon’s movement to enhance believability while making it more dynamic and expressive.

The dragon explores anthropomorphism through both its actions of grabbing and wearing its glasses, as well as through the deeper, personified emotion of loss, conveyed through the tragedy of its flightlessness, which is only revealed to the audience in the final scene thanks to the carefully staged lead-up scenes, of which exploit camera angles to keep this knowledge from the audience until the end. This cinematic plot twist encourages audiences to think deeper and reconsider the entirety of what they have just seen within the animation.

This animation as a whole explored dynamic environments through the sense of space that is created within the dragon’s cave, as well as in the way the dragon moves through and exists within that space.