Sean’s Christmas

Sean’s Christmas is an American animated short film being Sean’s first ever animated production and the first animated short of his cartoon creation Sean & Friends. The film debuted on Christmas Eve on the original TAGD Productions YouTube channel in collaboration with Sean’s high school video-production program.

The film is about Sean and his notable companions who all get ready for Christmas Day when Sean finds out that his school is closed for the winter. He invites people he’s familiar with to his house who all help him prepare for Christmas by decorating the house and cooking the dinner. After a long day’s work they all go home while Sean quickly rushes to the market to find presents.

The film debuts the first appearances of the original fab four characters Sean, Jaylyn, Shrill, and Dylan in animation. The film also introduces the appearances of Johnczz, and Sean’s pet Sam the Cat. Alongside Sean’s original few friends, everyone who collaborated at the school program appeared in the short as well teaming up together with Sean’s preparations in scenes of the short. Since Sean’s friend Dylan in real life was not able to participate in his voice acting, another voice actor played his character that sounded closest to him. The same applies to his friend Johnczz.

Since this was the official debut of the characters Sean had provided in many of his early drawings to who are his companions in real life with also third-party characters quickly added from the collaborative deal, not much character was really given to them when making the film. This was made as a very experimental film that Sean Malin had worked on just to learn how to tell a simple and short story with an art style that can be fully translated into animation. This was also when Sean had officially created an animated dimension for the characters to take place in. In a later short, the location that Sean lives in was revealed to be Southmoore which is a fictional city that was based off of Southaven.

Before this film was produced, Sean Malin had originally planned a feature-length film to debut all of what he has created into a pilot. However during the time this short film was in pre-production, it was delayed and was decided to debut a few of the characters into a Christmas short instead. Eventually the feature film was canceled and Sean Malin had continued making two other shorts later on to use new characters and ideas that would bring everything more lively and well-developed overtime.

Synopsis
Sean wakes up for another day of school, after he gets ready, he steps outside and finds out it’s been snowing. He comes back inside and grabs his winter gear and walks to school until Joshua tells him it’s closed. Elizabeth reminds him Christmas is coming as he comes home to prepare for the holiday. He then calls Aja to help with putting up the lights as his best friend Jaylyn tries to embarass him with her. After preparation, the gang goes home and Sean suddenly realizes he hasn’t gotten any gifts for anyone. He rushes to the market and searches for possible gifts to buy. Josh and December appear who help find him the perfect presents. On Christmas morning Sean’s friends and school acquaintances come over to celebrate as they get their gifts. In the end, they also brought a gift for Sean as well for being a great friend.

Characters/Voice Cast
Sean (Sean Malin)

Jaylyn (Jaylyn Dickens)

Joshua (Joshua Ausmer)

Aja (Aja Taylor)

Elizabeth (Elizabeth Preuss)

Josh (Josh Britt)

December (December McCraw)

Dylan (Layden Lacy)

Shrill (Shrill Desjard)

Johnczz (Jeff Wheeler)

Kierra (Kierra Ousley)

Sam the Cat (Sean Malin)

Soundtrack
”Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”

”Deck the Halls”

Production
During the time this film was being planned, Sean Malin was still doing regular in-person learning at his public high school. At the time while he was still learning about film, he took a special high tech video production class known as CNTV. Sean signed up for the class around May 2019 in 9th grade and was accepted at the start of his 10th grade year meeting his class crew on August 2019. As the months went by, Sean has worked hard in the class and became popular animating the CNTV intro and being the announcement voiceover as well. Sean was originally having a feature film in mind called Sean’s Epic Elusive Adventure being a movie pilot he would make independently, but the idea was canceled twice due to the pressure.

On November 2019, the manager wanted to know what the final CNTV video should be since she was retiring after the first semester. Sean suggested a Christmas special since Christmas break was coming, but since he was well experienced with his animation skills, he said it could be a full 3 minute animated segment. The manager was happy with the idea and had Sean get started.

After a week, a few decisions have been changed. Sean realized the time consumption on animating a full segment in general and would need all the time possible at school and at home to work on it. Since Christmas break was near, the segment could not be included the last CNTV video. The last day of the first semester was on December 13. So Sean decided to make it a separate film instead adding a couple extra minutes. The manager also stated that the film can only have CNTV people, but since Sean wasn’t able to make it a special video segment, she allowed his original friends to appear in the short as well but with little roles.

Once Sean was finished writing the script, Sean then got started on making the animation storyboard since it was intended to be fully animated. Since the film was animated, everyone had to have their voice recording sessions for their individual parts of the script. Everyone at the CNTV studio was setup at the voiceover area recording their lines one by one and emailed their finished recordings to Sean’s device. Lines for Jaylyn, Shrill, Dylan, and Johnczz were done virtually since their voices were not accessible at the studio or in the school. Dylan and Johnczz could not be voiced by their counterparts since neither had the ability for acting, so they both were virtually voiced by other voice actors that sounded closest to them.

Once everyone’s recording sessions were completed, Sean was then able to begin his animation process. The film was done in completely hand-drawn animation which was the hardest process of making the entire short. The backgrounds were made on Ibis Paint and the character and object animations were made on FlipaClip. And to translate his particular art style into animation, Sean Malin gave the animation a more comic feel to it since he’s drawn various comics and one-panel drawings traditionally and digitally beforehand. The backgrounds were created in 3D angles with solid colors and noticeable outlines. Every CNTV person was pre-designed back when the CNTV intro was first made in Sean’s cartoonish style, while the rest had a much earlier evolution. The characters were done in a limited animation style.

The whole film took over 1.5 months to make mostly regarding the animation process. When editing the animated scenes all together into Kinemaster, Sean also got zesty with some cartoon sound effects and a Christmas soundtrack to make it feel more like a film than a regular animated video on his original channel (which animated videos on the original TAGD Productions channel were a bit rare). Sadly the film took production up until December 24th, 2019 since Sean also had connection issues through school and at home. The manager said he could email the finished film to her address when it was complete on Christmas break during her post-retirement. The film however ended up releasing on Sean’s original TAGD Productions Channel the same night it was finished with the running time up to nearly 6 minutes total since school was closed and he couldn’t make its premiere.

Sean however felt unsure of the idea showing off the full film publicly released to YouTube, so he made it unlisted and sent the film to all his friends and everyone that worked on it that had social media. The film received a lot of positive reviews and found it as a jolly start for his animation career.

The film was re-released publicly on the Remarkable Toons YouTube channel on July 29, 2020 in celebration of the Remarkable Toons one year anniversary along with Christmas in July. The film was alternated in a compilation with the removal of a copyrighted track, tiny voice re-dubbing, and some animation/editing fixes.

Deleted Scenes
During the storyboard process, there were a few panels drawn and scripted that include a scene where Sean borrows somebody’s motorcycle to head to the store on time. Since time was running tight, the scene was excluded in the animation process. Sean’s friend Devin Bevil who volunteered to help with the original canceled feature film was also planned to voice the motorbiker.