Lost and Found in Belfast Zoo – a simple 2D animation

This is the first 2D animation that I created, based on my frequent visits to Belfast Zoo.

Ever since I first visited Belfast Zoo at age 11, I have been drawing pictures of the animals at the zoo in cartoon form, even imagining what the animals would be like if they were animated. After I visited the zoo in 2016 and saw then six-month old spectacled bear cub Lola, I made numerous drawings of her and other animal highlights from that trip, even imagining my own animated series with them as characters. One year later, Dad suggested to me that I could create my own short 2D animation, with Lola and a few other animals as the main characters.

Usually, when I draw an animal from Belfast Zoo, I make sure that the design looks as close to the character’s real-life species as possible. But for the animation, I decided to do my own more cartoony designs, that were different from my usual designs for the characters, just to experiment with them. For example, I drew Lola and her parents with actual spectacles instead of the creamy facial markings that characterise their species.

Next, Dad wrote two alternative story concepts for my animation. One was about Lola and her friends finding a lost human girl in the zoo, and trying to reunite her with her mother; the other story involved the gang trying to help a sick zookeeper (named John). I chose the lost child concept. I later produced a model sheet of multiple characters who could potentially appear in my animation (the majority of which did make it into the final product), and then wrote a full storyboard based on both the plot that Dad wrote and my own ideas.

Next, I used my mother’s iPad to produce short test animations of the main animal characters in their respective enclosures, waving their hands to the viewer; these were used in the opening of the film. Several months later, I decided to produce another storyboard that was shorter and more simple than the first one. After the second storyboard was completed, production on the animation officially started, beginning with the shots without dialogue. The first few shots I animated were nearly all of the young human girl’s scenes (the character has no dialogue other than screaming for her mother near the end). As I proceeded onto the shots where the characters speak and show their lips moving, I used a separate app on the iPad to record all of the lines for each shot (many of which made it into the final film). This made it easier to animate the characters’ lips in synch with the dialogue. I initially worked on my animation on most evenings or every evening where possible, then I decided to work on it twice a day to speed up the process and get it done quicker. I also used the iPad to record myself acting out some of the more difficult shots to animate, either with my Dad or just myself.

It took nearly two full years of animation, before it was finally completed in the summer of last year. During post-production, Dad recorded the music for the project and helped me to record some sound effects. While I voice most of the characters in the cartoon, I initially recorded Lola and Dante’s dialogue as a scratch track, as I wanted people of their ages to provide their voices. I eventually decided to voice Dante for the final film, rerecording my lines with a higher-pitched, raspier voice and then pitching it up one level on my laptop so that it sounds as close as possible to the voice I envisioned for the character. As for Lola, she ended up being voiced by my mother’s Northern Irish friend, Emma O’Flynn, who also recorded the child screaming ‘MUMMY!’, and I then pitched her voice higher so that it sounds more child-like. My mum herself can also be heard in the final product when the child’s mother is heard talking on her phone as her daughter storms away.

Special thanks go to all of my family for supporting me during production, and also to the staff of Belfast Zoo for their knowledge about the animals in their care, as this helped me to develop the main characters in my film.