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www.postmagazine.com 44 POST JULY 2016 EDUCATION & RECRUITMENT 'Broken: Rock, Paper, Scissors' Everyone is familiar with the zero-sum hand game Rock-paper-scissors, or ro- shambo, wherein rock crushes scissors, paper covers rock, and scissors cuts paper. This game became the theme of a CG animated short called "Broken: Rock, Paper, Scissors," during which rock stumbles upon the magical Paper, and it's love at first sight, until Scissors threatens to cut down Paper — then Rock steps in and sacrifices himself to save the lovely Paper. "The film is about sacrifice. Sacrifice for what you believe in, what you think is right and wrong, or even love. Mainly love, at least in Rock's eyes. But it also deals with the concept of being lonely and looking for something more," says Garrett O'Neal, one of the three stu- dent directors on the film (in addition to Bryan Locantore and Gang Maria Yi) who call themselves The Broken Team. "Rock is looking to break away, to find new hope and passion. Scissors wants to fill his emptiness with destruction and anger. And Paper is almost the oppo- site, she's the magnet pulling these two forces together." Although each of the filmmakers shared the director role, these Ringling students each had their own specialty: Yi was vis-dev artist/character modeler; O'Neal was animator; and Locantore was lighter/look-dev artist. The Broken Team began creating the film's concept during their second se- mester of junior year, as is customary at Ringling. The original premise for the film wasn't approved, so they worked through the summer on an improved concept. Production began when school started — though without approval for the film. "We were in the middle of trying to pass our 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' thesis instead of the thesis we were originally supposed to work on. So we ended up working on two films at the same time, which wasn't the best scenario," explains O'Neal. "We were finally able to get the faculty to approve 'Rock, Paper, Scissors,' but we were basi- cally starting our layout stage of produc- tion while the rest of the class was in the process of animating. This made it an uphill battle, but boy was it satisfying when we persuaded them to let us make 'Broken.' It made it that much sweeter." Production wrapped in early April 2014 — just as school ended — and the film was accepted into last year's SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. hours of work to make the scene look large and convincing." Today, the animation style and aes- thetic seem perfect for the film — which won a second-place prize at the 2015 Student Emmys. Yet, there were some who tried to persuade Boyden to change a few of his stylistic choices during pro- duction. "I learned, however, to balance critique and personal vision, to make a film I was happy with once it was fin- ished," he says. "An Object at Rest" presents snippets of history, but how does one choose which events to portray over such a large stretch of time? The answer: personal preference. There are some animated ob- jects and characters in the film that only exist because Boyden really wanted to animate them. This includes the prehis- toric animals, the Civil War soldiers, and the steam-powered tractor. No doubt Boyden's student accom- plishments helped catch the attention of Blue Sky Studios — which is known for its colorful spin on early history with its Ice Age franchise — where he is currently a storyboard artist. It seems he is poised to make history yet again.