HANNAH ANASTASI
Silence and her Roommate
When Lola moves to university, Silence is a cute, winning guest who calms her as she navigates a new daunting life. But as Silence grows, Lola’s ties to the outside world start to suffer. Sooner or later, Lola will have to confront the elephant-sized creature in her room - how much Silence is simply too much?
Silence and Her Roommate is an animated short Commissioned by BBC New Creatives and produced by Rural Media, supported by Arts Council England and BBC Arts. I worked as Lead Animator, and helped the Director to finalise character designs and create storyboards.
The film was nominated for Best Animation in the Midlands Royal Television Society and was selected to screen at the Aesthetica Film Festival in 2022.
Credits
Written & Created by Joanna Woźnicka
Directed by Liam Harris
Animated by Hannah Anastasi
Clean-Up Animaton by Haraldur Petursson
Cel Paint by Franziska Matusza
Background Art by Katherine Spangenberg
Sound Design by Chris Reed
Music by Kath Williams
Post Production by David Jones
Producer: Anna Campbell
Executive Producer: Grant Black
Production Company: Rural Media
Release date
12 December 2021
Animation
As Lead Animator, I completed the entire short on paper over a 4 month production period. The Art department had extensive meetings discussing the motives of Lola and Silence on a regular basis, with Joanna providing lots of useful information that made it easy to express their personalities. Director Liam Harris was on hand to offer feedback and suggestions for key moments, but for the most part gave me creative freedom when it came acting decisions, which was really liberating!
I felt really lucky to be part of a very talented team that did a fantastic job transforming my initial linework into the final rendering style:
Character Design
In pre-production, I spent some time drawing Lola and Silence, inspired by the initial designs that Liam was still in the process of finalising. After positive feedback from the rest of the team, Liam adapted his design of the characters to better match my sketches - hopefully seen as the best of both worlds! I also designed some wardrobe changes suggested by Joanna:
Original Director Pitch
Before joining as Animator, I originally pitched to direct. You can view some of my Pre-Vis work below:
Animator | Director | Multimedia Artist
HANNAH ANASTASI