Directed by Abbie Bacilla and Andrea Schmitz
Character Design by Abbie Bacilla
Art Direction by Abbie Bacilla
Storyboard and Animatic by Andrea Schmitz
Animated by Abbie Bacilla and Andrea Schmitz
Song “Future Town” by PAiDA

For the anthology Things Took a Turn: At the End of the World, Abbie Bacilla and I decided we wanted to do a collaborative project. Abbie had the great idea to do the four horsemen of the apocalypse as anime magical girls.

Together, we brainstormed in Figma to decide on a style and design direction. We tried to build out the personalities of the four ‘horsegirls’ through their style. We reached out to Japanese music idol PAiDA for permission to use her song “Future Town” which was perfect for what we were going for (and after 1000 listens we never got tired of it).

Using the song for reference, I created an animatic in Toonboom Storyboard Pro so that we could nail down the assets we needed to build. We referenced typical anime opening clichés (like girl-running-with-toast-in-mouth) to help inform the transition from normal high school girls to apocalyptic magical girls.

Abbie took the lead on the art direction, mocking up backgrounds in Cinema 4D and painting over them in Procreate. She used her own specific character style to create a lineup of characters in and out of uniform. She also designed the incredible title card!

Together we split up the total shots so we could complete them in time, and each of us took on half of the transformation-action sequence at the heart of the short. I took the action sequence, and basically animated each of the characters piece by piece in AfterEffects with shape layers, using the character models as reference. What was difficult was finding ways for the horsegirls to destroy the world using their weapons, but in a way that felt big and impactful, and in a way that tied into their character. We wanted War to be a heavy-hitter short queen, Pestilence to be a rebellious sk8er girl, Famine to be vengeful against influencer culture and chronic online-ness, and Death to want to burn it all down and start over.

It was super fun, and a great chance for me to animate in a different style!