Wolf's Clothes is a 35 second animated short created by Shannon Ross that I would happily watch repeatedly on a loop. Actually, Shannon initially animated her cartoon so that it could be looped, which would be useful for an Instagram reel but not so much for the big-screen. I much prefer the latter. Thankfully, Wolf's Clothes is opening the first edition of Nitrate this Saturday, May 16. Shannon and I discussed frame-by-frame animation and the merits of a silly lil thang.
T: Well, let's talk about your short.
S: My super, uber short.
T: It's so fun, I watched it a couple times today. It's like taking a little shot of happiness. Is animation a big part of your life?
S: I mean, I would like it to be more. I'm an illustrator primarily, and I do comics for the most part, so that's kind of a great segue into animation, because it's like storyboards in a way. Animation is definitely way more time consuming, and there's a lot of other things to think about, one of which being perspective and things that I'm not great at, which is part of why this particular one is just kind of like a figure in a blank space.
But it was also a bit of an experiment for me so that I could teach myself some simple frame by frame animation stuff and get a better sense for the digital program I was using, which was just Procreate on the iPad.
I also am not super technologically oriented, you could say. Procreate released an animation specific program for the iPad as well, and I tried that with a friend, and I was just so overwhelmed by how many different features there were. So for now, I've been sticking mostly with frame by frame short form animation, but obviously that takes so long because you have to redraw every frame individually.
T: I took a class in high school where I learned animation, and it was the same. I got so intimidated with Adobe programs, and I ended up using Illustrator but whatever I did, I would never be able to recreate.
S: Yeah, I had a professor in college who specialized in hand drawn frame by frame animation. They showed us the short and then brought in the stack of all the cells, and it was like 1000 sheets of paper. But it was very inspiring also, because I was like, okay, so you can make really cool stuff just individually, frame by frame. It might take forever, but it has, like, a very organic feel to it that I like a lot more than most digital animation.
I had a professor in college who specialized in hand drawn frame by frame animation. They showed us the short and then brought in the stack of all the cells, and it was like 1000 sheets of paper.
T: It's sort of like reading on a Kindle versus reading a book — you can't get a sense of how many frames there are or how many pages have gone by when it's digitized like that. It makes sense to hear that you have the comic background because I got a strong sense of distinct character, despite there being no dialogue and not a lot of time spent with him. Do you have a bigger story in your head of this character that you didn't fit into the short?
S: In a kind of loosely imaginative sense, sure, because I think that's what's also fun about the super uber shorts is contextually there's definitely a lot left to the imagination. But for the most part, I was experimenting with looping animations. This one was made a one shot for the sake of being able to screen it, but in the original it actually just loops back to where the fur gets swept back up and onto the figure, and then it starts back.
T: What brought you to the wolf-man?
S: I was doing a lot with morphing animations, and the first thing that came to mind was something fantasy or whimsical, like a shape shifter. I ended up with that werewolf guy and thinking about all the different ways that people do werewolf morphing transitions.
I also really love horror movies and old, campy vampire, werewolf monster movies. So I was thinking of all the different ways that there are these insane, gory transitions of, like, somebody's teeth and nose stretching out in a super scary way and it's all anatomically correct or whatever. I was like, what if the wolf transformation was just a thin sheet. Like wearing a toupee that could easily be dislodged by the wind, and then being left feeling naked when it gets messed up. Then the classic slapstick beat of it taking a second and then they cover themselves, sheepishly.
T: Great word choice. I don't know if this is a cheap reference, but do you watch Adventure Time at all?
S: Absolutely. If you asked me about inspirations, that was gonna be the first thing that I said.
T: Okay, yeah, I'm putting it together now. The style, and also taking an animal that's typically menacing when in cartoon anthropomorphized form, but instead giving it a meek personality. It makes me think of the fox in Adventure Time.
S: Absolutely. I was thinking about him a lot, I was thinking about the Jake suit, where Finn wears Jake as a power suit, but his little face would be sticking out from Jake's mouth. Or any of the other stupidly goofy, magical animal characters in that show. It is definitely very obvious in my illustration style that I grew up on that and Regular Show. All those early Cartoon Network ridiculousness.
I was thinking about the Jake suit, where Finn wears Jake as a power suit, but his little face would be sticking out from Jake's mouth.
T: In thinking about your process, I imagined you got struck with this idea and then you got it out in like, a day or two.
S: I think it wasn't so long because it was just, it started out as, like, it was a lot more rough, and then when I realized that it could be something that I would want to show around or share with people, like, cleaned it up a bit. But I think it only took me, like, a week or so, like, it, it was pretty, pretty straightforward.
T: Sometimes you get hit with that spark of a story but you shrug it off and then it disappears. Do you have any relationship to that, or advice about actually getting it out?
S: I definitely struggle a lot on the front end to start working at all, because I'll think I need to have all this stuff laid out and I have a very clear image of my mind of where I'm going, but then when I start, I just kind of want to be done. Which is why, as an experiment this was a perfect format to work within.
Which then leads into the best advice that I've ever gotten was from one of my favorite cartoonists who's called Caroline Cash. She's really awesome. If you're into comics, you should check her out. But she told me to leave your rock opera to your older ages, or like, till a little bit later. Start with very short, tangible things that you can crank out in an hour or two. You don't feel like you're sitting yourself down for this whole intense journey through this giant project. Just start with something that you can easily put out and then look back on, and then it's a lot easier to go from there: to make edits or expand it, or give yourself a post to stand on and look back from, versus just getting stuck in the beginning stages of something to try to make sure it turns out perfect.
T: That is good advice. And also hard to hear, because you want to just go straight to the rock opera.
S: Yeah, and longer form projects always appeal in a way that the reward will be more gratifying because it's something that you poured so much time and effort and potentially sacrificed into. But again, it's kind of like, you know, giving yourself little training sessions, or little like, you know, moving up in your weight class, like working your way up to it, because then by the time that you go to do something, especially if it's like a new medium or something that you want to kind of hone a little bit more, getting better at those little things that are part of the process.
T: And not everything actually does have to be a big project or a full book or a full feature.
S: Yeah, absolutely. You know, have you ever seen the Adult Swim animation short series? I don't know how they do it anymore, because I obviously don't have cable anymore, so I don't know if they run it at specific times or anything, but they're also on YouTube. They're just called smalls instead of shorts. But some of them are so fucking funny and really awesome. And there's a couple of them that have been featuring, like, you know, new and upcoming, like, animators that started on YouTube and stuff like that.
T: It's funny, short form content rules the world, and yet, at the same time, it's like the options are either a reel or a whole movie. It's like the short form content that we're used to now replaced our ability to appreciate stuff like that that we used to be able to enjoy more.
S: I hear a lot of my friends who work in film talking about verticals and how much they hate them. It's like these super high production value things that are literally just made to go on Instagram and Tiktok. And it's so baffling to me. It just really reduces the amount of appreciation that people have for how much work goes into something, because it feels so much more casual when it's on your phone.
I'm trying to be good at keeping myself in check in that way. I've been taking a very long break from Instagram, and it's been really nice.