"The Pleasant Dreams of Timmy Weems" is my graduation project. It is a series of 7 short animations which tells the story of a little boy called "Timmy" who struggles to find what he wants to do later in life. Even when his home situation isn't the best he dreams a lot about what he wants to do! The episodes follow Timmy as he sets out to make his career-dreams come true at a young age!
Dark humor is very prominent in these short episodes. It was a type of comedy i was exploring a lot with back then, in this case i wanted to draw a stark contrast between the adoring rhymes and the dark themes and twists and create somewhat of a shock reaction.
Looking back on this project i do have to say that it even shocked me watching the episodes back. Even though i look back on it with pride to have created so many animations in such a short time. Style and theme wise i'd like to think i've very much grew and improved on it haha!
I wanted to combine my love for storytelling, comedy, music composing, concepting and animation in this project.
The overall style is very much inspired by Tim Burton's sketch work. His work on "Oyster Boy" was a big inspiration for this.
Before i ended up making an animation i had some earlier designs and sketches. These doodles i made while on my internship. I didn't think much about it until my original graduation project failed because of time issues.
Some earlier sketches
Some earlier sketches
Some earlier sketches
I salvaged what i liked from that first project and together with some of the character sketches i reworked it in another style and medium i was comfortable and happy with.
After that i started writing the stories and make the storyboards while refining the style
The script, music, art & animation were all made by me. The voice over is done by Saara Salminen.
