“Unconventional Family is a 2D digital hand drawn animation created frame-by-frame in ToonBoom Harmony. The film is 2-min in duration and centers on my character, Kyle Faiser and his family. Kyle comes home in the evening and greets his kids, Lex and Kyra, at the door who ask him to read them a bedtime story. His wife, Alex, follows shortly after. Kyle then goes into a pillow fort in Lex and Kyra’s room that they had built earlier. Both kids have a book in their hands and begin arguing about which book will be the bedtime story. Kyle suggests that Lex reads the book while Kyra makes shadow puppets. Kyle then uses his fire powers to light up the fort as Lex starts reading the story and the film ends. This short film was animated in ToonBoom Harmony. The backgrounds were drawn using ProCreate and compositing was done in Premiere Pro. I recorded about half of my sound in the Audio Lab at OCAD University, the other half was taken from various profiles on FreeSound.org. I’ve been working on these characters for a long time, since I was 14/15. To see them finally able to get out of my head and into an animated short makes me feel very proud of myself and how far I’ve come. It also makes me excited for my future as an animator.”