Animation Short - 250 Fireworks And Freedom

Short Films

Jun 27

America’s 250th birthday starts off with a bang 💥

Short Commentary

Sometimes when developing ideas for shorts, I have to take the timing of when the short is releasing into account. This is one of those situations. Originally this short was developed as I was thinking of original ideas for Giggle Gang so that I could transition the characters away from sourced meme content that I could find on TikTok. It was originally supposed to be a nod to the style of gag you see in old cartoons where a kidnapper ties a rival onto the train tracks then hilarity ensues. The short was storyboarded and worked on last year, but I missed a good chance to premiere it for the 4th of July. I figured I’d shelve it for this year, not realizing it was the 250th anniversary of America. When I did find out I made some minor tweaks to make it a bit more topical, and voila la!

The production was very smooth, but like previous shorts where FX are used, I had to jump back into Adobe After Effects to get it done. It’s a bit unfortunate that the particle generator in Toonboom Harmony Premium is a mess. I’ll get to learning more about it eventually. Overall I enjoyed working on this project. It helped me refine the Giggle Gang’s aesthetic a bit more, and it was fun to work on. I hope it’ll add to the good energy I’ve been seeing about The United States these past few weeks that the World Cup has been happening.

Thanks for watching!