Ross Stringer’s BAFTA-nominated short Crab Day centers on a young boy who is forced to kill a crab as part of a fishing community’s ritual of reaching manhood. The striking short is quite memorable thanks to his simple designs, powerful storyline and economical approach to storytelling and character development. We recently had a chance to interview the talented U.K.-based animation director about his award-winning short:
Animag: Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration for the short?
Ross Stringer: The film was inspired by the people and places I grew up around. I’m from a coastal town called Great Yarmouth, which historically was a fishing town. I used to go fishing with my dad and I have a distinct memory of the first time I killed a fish — it felt like a rite of passage, one of the many rituals that make you into a ‘man’. My writer [Alekcandra Sykulak] and I thought crabs were a funny visual metaphor for the hard-shelled man with a soft inside.
When did you start working on it and how long did it take to produce?
We actually came up with the concept as part of a workshop in our first year at the National Film and Television School. This was in February 2021. We then revisited the film concept for our graduation film in January 2022 and finished production March 2023. So it took roughly a year or more of development and production. Though, I did spend a lot of time faffing around trying to decide on the style of the film and didn’t actually start animating until quite late in production.
How many people worked on it and which animation tools were used?
It was a good sized team, I think around twenty-ish people including HODs, assistants and musicians. For the animation, It was drawn by myself and some assistants that I’d got involved near the end. It was all drawn with pencil on paper, and paint on cardboard for the red of the crab. We photographed it under a rostrum using Dragonframe and then I composited everything in Adobe AfterEffects and played around with all the fun camera movements.
One of the beautiful qualities of your short is its simplicity and straight-forward approach to design…can you discuss that?
During development I fell in love with naive art, more specifically the Cornish painter (and fisherman) Alfred Wallis. He was a fisherman all his life but took up painting in his older age with no art education. His work had so much charm, the paintings were raw and childlike, and conveyed so much with so little. The design part of production was very difficult because I wasted a lot of time over-designing everything, when it was actually most important to keep it as simple as possible, like a child would. This is especially important as I wanted to capture that childlike perspective of the world.
Who are some of your all-time favorite animation idols?
That’s a hard question, I could list so many… I guess in relation to this film I’d say Andreas Hykade, Caleb Wood or Michael Dudok de Wit. I like anyone who’s trying different things really — Edwin Rostron is a cool guy, he did a great talk during my undergrad at Farnham; that was some of my first exposure to good experimental/independent animation. Shout out to his Edge of Frame Blog, there’s a bunch of great animators on there doing interesting things.
When did you know you wanted to work in animation?
I never planned it really, but I’d started playing around with animation as a hobby in college, and then I tried my luck at a university course, and then I tried my luck at an MA, and then I was an animator. I think it had something to do with being exposed to independent short films while I was at university. Especially anything hand drawn or made non-digitally. I’d never connected with art or film like that before, it felt so personal and unfiltered, and it moved like music.
What were you biggest challenges as you set out to tell this story?
Keeping it simple is hard, especially when there’s always so many external voices telling you how to properly tell the story. We went through a lot of revisions and because of the style, people found it hard to read the animatic. Sometimes problems were solved just by animating the shot and suddenly everyone could read the story and the characters. Every now and then you just have to trust the process.
What was the biggest lesson you learned from this project that you can pass on to future animation hopefuls?
You don’t have to finish everything to perfection. There were countless things that were never completed or properly revised before we had our first screening at our graduation show, but what’s funny is no one seemed to care, and the audience even enjoyed the unfinished elements. I’d say it’s been a good lesson in what you can get away with as long as you’ve got a good story.
What are your plans for the future?
Make more films, explore other areas of animation, and collaborate with more folks!
Watch the trailer below:
For more info, visit rossstringer.art/crab-day
