Quick Draw
48 hour animation challenge
2026
Team Players
The third in the team Possum Party trilogy.
This year, we were thrown a curve ball. Not one, but two prompts: Work or Play. We decided to collide those two ideas into something we are very proud of.
Exact same team as last time, Erin Urdahl, Charlie Swan Pullin, Sam Helyer and myself. We made such a great film last year, why fix what ain't broke, right? We were way more organised this time, actually made time for a healthy night's sleep halfway through, and had the best time doing it.
It was both streamed on the official Cardiff Animation Youtube channel, and screened live at the 2026 Cardiff Animation Festival, along with 67 other entrants, where it received an amazing response from the audience.
This also marks the first time I've animated in Flash (Adobe Animate) in nearly ten years.
Team Players Animatic - with Deleted scenes
Here is our rough animatic for Team Players, with the full, recorded script. That's right. Exclusive, deleted content!
Since we only had 48 hours to get this film done, we ended up having to cut a bunch of shots for time.
While I'm incredibly happy with the final film, it's a bit of a shame that we ended up cutting a couple of my favourite gags.
2025
Re- Capturing Childhood
"Re-Capturing Childhood". was the second Possum Party submission for 2025's Cardiff Quick Draw 48 hour animation challenge. This year's theme was childhood.
Made by Charlie Swan Pullin, Sam Helyer, Erin Urdahl, and myself. It was screened alongside 81 other entrants at the Cardiff Animation Weekender at the Chapter Theatre. It would later be shown at Bristol's Bluescreen event at the Cube Cinema.
Since my living room had the most space, we decided to set up our temporary studio there. Animation sleep over! After receiving this year's theme, "Childhood", we got to work coming up with an idea and assigning our roles.
We all drew a whole bunch of character designs. Ultimately, we chose Charlie Swan Pullin's design for the boy, and Sam Helyer's design for the old lady. We all quickly fleshed out the story, Sam put together a proper script. It was unanimously decided that Erin Urdahl, who was working remotely from the US, would be the perfect fit to voice both characters. She had the voices to us in less than 20 minutes, and did such an amazing job. Charlie put together an animatic, and we were off!
So, we had two characters talking on a bench, no backgrounds, not much action. Simple, right? Not exactly. This was a near one and a half minute, lip-synch heavy project, that had to be finished in (now) less than 48 hours. We realised it would take too long to lip-synch the entire thing. We needed some cut away animations to save on time. We came up with the duck and frog interplay idea (which also acted as a nice bit of forshadowing), and I animated all those sections, along with anything that wasn't lip-synch. Erin designed the Possum Party logo, and animated both the titles and bench. Basically, anything with boiling, that was her. She also sourced all the sound effects.
As we completed each shot, I composited everything and edited the film as quickly as I could. It was down to the wire, but we got it in at the very last second.
I made sure we were stocked with snacks, and reminded everyone to hydrate. Charlie commented on how it's easy to forget you have a body when you're in the throws of animation. Very true.
While it got a bit stressfull at the eleventh hour, we found the whole experience to be so much fun. I'm glad we got to do it in person. Definitely more motivating. I'm so proud of the team and what we accomplished. Can't wait to do this all again next year.
2024
How Cotton Candy is Made
A short I made with Erin Urdahl for the Cardiff Quick Draw 48 hour animation challenge. This was screened, along side all the other entries at the Cardiff Animation Festival 2024.
This year's theme was "treat," and I don't think either me or Erin could have been given a more inspiring prompt. Erin, with her years of carnie experience, pitched an idea based on a concept by 2nd-generation carnival extraordinaire, Wayne McKay. We had the idea planned out in 10 minutes, the storyboard finished within 45, and for the next 47 hours and 15 minutes we gradually brought this quirky (and admittedly messed up) idea to life.
We managed to meet the deadline with just 5 minutes to spare, and I'm so proud of what we accomplished. I couldn't have done this without Erin, who despite having absolutely no animation experience, turned out to be a natural. She jumped into designing, puppet crafting, sound sourcing, providing motivational support, and even animating for the first time in her whole life with such excitement and enthusiasm, and did such an outstanding job.
