"Remember Me"
“Remember Me” is the result of 4 months of dedicated and almost non-stop work. Created back in 2013 as my University graduation project and as a personal tribute to my country's war heroes who fought on the Eastern front of WWII, it was one of the most challenging projects I ever created, not only because of my technical limitations and complete lack of experience animating, but especially because of my deep sense of responsibility towards the seriousness of the subject - my country's history and the memory of our war heroes and veterans... My strongest wish was to make something worthy of them.
Early concepts and styles
Bellow are some ink on paper sketches exploring the look I initially wanted. I gave up on it in the end, because it would have been a lot harder to pull off and I couldn't have finished the film in 4 months, but this is the style I would've loved to try.
Bellow are some of the digital paintings I explored after and which convinced me to go for this style. I thought they would have looked more appealing to the general public and working digitally also allowed me to be faster and to achieve certain animation effects that I couldn't have with ink on paper.
Final frames from the film
Final Film
Technique and Process
In 2013, when I created this animation, I did not have any previous experience with animation. I was studying an Animation and Illustration degree, but it was more focused on illustration rather than animation so unfortunately it gave me very little know-how to pull off a proper short animation. I was still determined to create a worthwhile film so I taught myself how to do it using whatever YouTube tutorials I could find. I also worked on the film all alone and the deadline was extremely tight, but eventually I managed to craft a story that could work even with limited animation and no dialogue. The only scene that I animated frame-by-frame is the opening one, with the hand turning on the radio. The rest of the animated parts were rotoscoped after clips I had filmed of myself or my sister acting out the scenes. I used Photoshop to trace out the rotoscoped parts and painstakingly painted every frame by hand. I also used Adobe Flash (no longer existing) to create the movements of the cars or the planes on the sky. My process was indeed very rough and primal :) but nevertheless the response I got from fellow Romanians was absolutely heart-warming.