I don’t think Lil Bo’s health insurance is going to cover this one 🫰

Artist Commentary

To me, what makes animation so compelling is character acting. In live action, things always feel real, even if the acting or setting is absurd. A simple slapstick joke about going to the doctor may be a bit unintuitive to make unless you work extra hard to make it happen. For live action, oftentimes things will simply be dialogue instead of physical comedy. However, with animation, this sort of idea is rudimentary and generally expected and that’s always been something I found endearing with the format. So in line with that perspective, the goal for this short was to have some fun doing a bit of character acting. It’s hard to balance fleshing the characters out, with making the punchline and doing so all within 30 seconds, but I think I was able to tell the audience a little bit more about the dynamic between these two characters in an entertaining way.

The Production

This short was a fairly standard production. When it comes to slapstick/ character acting shorts, things tend to be very simple since the focus is on how the character(s) act. The difficulties for me in this regard tend to fall in the realm of how the puppets (if they’re being used) interact with each other. Animating punches, falls and things of that nature can be a bit tricky and this short was no exception. Bo is kind of a punching bag, and he probably has the most animation dedicated to him getting hit or falling. Because his head is so big, it’s kind of awkward having to animate him hitting the floor. Over time I’ve found ways to streamline that so this time it wasn’t as difficult as it usually is. One thing that was surprisingly annoying to deal with, is an issue of IK (inverse kinematics). In the cut where Bo’s arm is extended to test Lil’ Bo’s reflexes, you can see that Bo’s arm has 2 different line thicknesses. This issue showed up at the end of production when I rendered out the animation, and I’ve noticed it in several other shorts. It’s a minor bug, but I’ll have to figure out how to fix it in the future with the V7 puppets.

I guess the last thing that I should mention is that the ‘look’ of earlier Giggle Gang shorts posted this year (2026) is absent from this one. This short wasn’t made before those shorts so why are those visual flairs missing? The simple answer is that I’m still experimenting with the look of these shorts. The Giggle Gang format is very eclectic. Sometimes the shorts are black and white, and other times not. Sometimes they have backgrounds and other times they don’t, etc. I am planning on locking down a more consistent look for these shorts soon, but in the meantime they may still look a bit different from each other.