Jacopo Armani is originally from Northern Italy, but he currently lives in France. Recently, he had the chance to study at Vancouver Film School, where he has really discovered his true passion for filmmaking and animation.

"Being a King" is his first take into the world of computer animation. It is also his final project for VFS, where he graduated in 2006. The film is a funny take on status, as the main character discovers that power is not all it's cracked up to be - it has an ugly side, you might say - and that even a fool can be wise if he finds his proper place in the world.

"Being a King is a speculation on the nature of power. I decided to work on it after a reading of the short novel 'The Listening King' by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. I liked the idea of representing a King coping with the duties and pleasures of his privileged position.

I have mixed this concept with a character I had in my mind, a Jester named Robb. A simple, positive, childish character driven by a curiosity for everything around him. Again, another Italian has been a great source of inspiration for him: Roberto Benigni, the great actor and director behind Life is Beautiful. I have studied his gestures and body language he uses to convey emotion, and I have applied them to show my character's personality.

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I spent six months of hard work to put together the short as my graduation project. The first two months were devoted to preproduction. It was a very hectic and organic process. I had several different ideas all pivoting around the King and Robb, but I also had a constraint: within the project timeframe I could only make one to two minutes of character animation.

In the first draft of the script I had Robb already being a king, sitting on his throne. He was going to be pulled at the right and the left by his duties as well as his pleasures. The throne itself was very unstable. It was rocking under his weight. Eventually, I had Robb falling down and losing his power. Although I liked the metaphor, when I put it together into a pre-visualization reel, it was over 3 minutes of screen time!

I cut and trimmed out several shots just to discover that I couldn't tell the story within the time limits I had. At that point I was very discouraged. I had the model and the set ready, but no story to tell! Besides, I was expected to move into the animation stage in a few weeks.

It was Christmas. I left the project during the holidays and then I came back to it a week later. All of a sudden the solution of using the paintings to show the rights and responsibilities of being a king came to me. I had found the way to save the original concept, keep the character Robb, and drastically cut down the number of animated shots. I quickly storyboarded this new version without even passing through the script. All the pieces were coming together. The animatic was under two minutes, short enough to be animated within the remaining time (I thought!).

Animating the shots was generally fun, but some issues came up: Robb's character design wasn't tailored for animation, his eyes were too small, and his head was to big. Thus, representing emotion and weight was really a challenge. Also physical shots were very hard to animate. The most difficult one was the Waltz. I don't have any notion of dance, so the first run at it was awful! Timing wasn't right and poses weren't convincing. I made several attempts to fix it, without success. In the end, I ditched the whole shot and went (finally!) to study some video references from a Waltz course tape (what a lazy animator I was!). From there I nailed down the most important poses and the timing beats.

Working under several constraints (personal skills, time limits, etc.) forced me to come up with efficient solutions to tell the story. --Jacopo Armani

The shot I am most proud of is the opening sequence: from a story point of view it was important to show somehow Robb being bored with his current life, in order to give him his motivation to start off his journey. I made several walks, changing the weight, the rhythm and such. After several attempts I'm happy with what I pulled off. The gesture of him tossing the ball in the air served to illustrate and reinforce his humble origins as a jester. This contrasts with what he is going to experience next.

At the end of the semester, the short wasn't complete yet. There were still a few shots that needed a lot of work, and many others needed some cleanup. Yet the story was solid and so it earned me a festival scholarship of two extra months from Vancouver Film School. The goal of this scholarship was to cleanup and improve the work to be able to screen the film at festivals. Actually, during that time, I have re-animated 60% of the shots from scratch. In fact, I was much faster and more focused than before, thanks to what I'd learned in the previous months.

In the end I can say it's been a great experience. Working under several constraints (personal skills, time limits, etc.) forced me to come up with efficient solutions to tell the story. Although I still see many issues and glitches in the short here and there, I think the story holds together well, and that is what is important to me.

I am aware that this short won't touch everyone in the same way, and I am not expecting to. My only hope is that somebody will find it thought-provoking. As for the several interpretations of the film? As one of my mentors at VFS would say: 'Filmmakers are not supposed to spoon-feed the audience!' "

       --Jacopo Armani, MAR 2007