For this project for the London International Animation Festival in 2022, I chose the theme of being human and it is called Gossip Kills. Which is about 45 seconds of 2D animation short films.

About the background, my inspiration came from a social news event about how verbal violence can lead a person into the dark and kill a person. However, in the story, the little girl did foolish things like tripping over the banana peel on the ground, drawing onlookers to see the excitement. The little girl wanted to escape, but in the front is a gossiper, and behind is the abyss. Who can save her? If you were the girl, how to make a choice?

Sometimes, we are all ordinary people. We will all do some foolish things. Unfortunately, we are all language-violence people. No one will make an exception. However, we did foolish things and tend to surround ourselves with three types of people. 

Initially, someone who exerts violence of language, regardless of whether the parties have a voice, their first reaction is to stir up the fire and even stand on the moral high ground, and even anxious to label this person as different to show their moral cleanliness. 

Secondly, a crowd of onlookers who maintain a neutral attitude, and will objectively and timely remind the person who did the too stupid things to solve the matter as soon as possible. 

Thirdly, people are worried and sad. Privately, they will ask what is going on with the person. They do not want to participate in the so-called “public execution”, and they do not want the person to be hurt more by the discussion behind the suppression. 

After that, most of the time, the mouth is like a pistol. Gossip is like a bullet.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. Revelling in verbal violence, dying in verbal violence. In the end, gossip will kill people.

That is the reason why I chose this theme as my story and presented it in black and white. I can use Photoshop to draw the background, TVP software to make the keyframe and intermediate frame of the animation to test action.

In the end, I will use Final Cut Pro to do the video clips, and AE software to make the simple special effects of the girl’s battle with the mouth.