Node Fest: There's NODE place like Home

When we were approached by Node Fest - Australia's Premiere Motion Design & Animation event - to create a film that opened the festival, we were a little nervous. After all, this event is a chance to represent and introduce our industry! Those nerves quickly faded however, and were replaced by the creative possibilities that lay ahead of us.

The only criteria for the brief was to ensure we clearly show the 14 different speakers names. We set out with clear initial goals:

1. Create our own unique take on event-opening films
2. Showcase our personality and wide range of skills
3. Entertain ourselves (and hopefully others too)
It was obvious to us from the get go that we wanted to focus heavily on character and story (not commonly featured in conference titles) to showcase our specialist skills. This gave us a chance to combine a wild mix of different techniques ensuring they merge together into a cohesive, rich world.

And so, a faux 90's sitcom featuring a bunch of misfits centered around a suburban family home was born, complete with its own catchy theme song.

After some extensive rewatching of classic 80’s and 90's sitcoms such as Full House, Perfect Strangers and Home Improvement, we were well entrenched in the various tropes and formulas of the era. Not to mention, ahem, some of us lived through those eras ourselves so the nostalgia kick was a nice trip down memory lane. While the overall goal was to entertain with a colourful cast of hilarious misfits and stereotypes, we wanted to ensure there was a backbone to it all.
Our team brainstorming sessions ranged from whimsical to wild and while we had some great comedic jumping off points, it all felt a little empty without a further justification behind the choices. After toying with different themes, we decided to base each character design on a common animation tool or technique - we were presenting to the animation industry after all!