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The Last Plant

The fate of the last plant on a small planet rests on the shoulders of a clumsy astronaut girl

  • Bo Lin
    Director
  • Bo Lin
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    2 minutes 16 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 1, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Bo Lin

Lin, Bo is a student at OCAD University and an animator, based in Toronto/Mississauga, Canada. Bo has completed a short film, The Tatami Room, for his Advanced Animation Studio class in 2019. Bo’s animation work usually explores motion and is influenced by traditional 2D animation and the works of the contemporary director Yuasa Masaaki. The ideas behind the works are usually based on what he sees around him. It can be about what he considers to be a large social issue like food waste or just an exploration of color. When he’s not studying at OCAD, you'll find him on Facebook, researching online for references, or spending time with his family.

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Director Statement

My art practice explores the classical frame by frame animation techniques alongside digital tools to create a narrative. Over the past years I have been working on improving my practice. This new work demonstrates what I have learned. The work, The Last Plant, is about the fate of the last plant on a small planet resting on the shoulders of a clumsy astronaut girl. The intention is to create a narrative with traditional animation about an ageless theme: the underdog saving the day. The work was all animated in Adobe Animate and the backgrounds were traditional watercolor.

The inspiration for this project has come from events like the Amazon forest fire and animations I rewatched at the time, like Wall-E, Little Witch Academia, and Kaiba; the designs in particular were inspired by Little Witch Academia and Kaiba. The designs are meant to be simplistic in nature, so they would be easier to animate. The color choices were greatly inspired by Kaiba while the movements were more inspired by Little Witch Academia. Character designs and background art are a mix of both. For example, the figure of the girl is more like a character design from Kaiba, while the face is more like a design from Little Witch Academia. The work itself will be a humorous take on the narrative while also having some amount of stakes and seriousness when the planet keeps getting hit by the meteors. Overall, the work is meant to be simplistic, so the themes present in the film, like the journey of the underdog, and how greed made her blind, were simple themes that allowed me to have fun creating the narrative. Other notable influences for this project included Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki, which is about the princess of the Valley of the Wind trying to find a way for a giant growing toxic jungle and humans to coexist.

The title of this work is The Last Plant. It is a title that embodies the straightforwardness of the short itself. The title is a simple one that lets the audience know of the plot from the beginning. After last year’s The Tatami Room animation, I felt that I have not really done something less experimental and more of a regular narrative. Hence, The Last Plant is my last chance at school to make something with a traditional narrative.