I'm Ross Brennan, a working-class storyteller and storyboard animator from Glasgow. My work in animation is a conduit for the stories I would like to tell, whether that be comedic shorts or longer-form narrative work. Many of my stories and animations are part of the fantasy genre, aiming to evoke a sense of nostalgia for the fantasy media I grew up with while also trying to push the genre towards a more inclusive future. The issue of disability is particularly one I am interested in as a person with an autism spectrum disorder, as you will see from my dissertation on the interplay of magic and disability in fantasy fiction. Storytelling and narrative are the aspects of animation I am most interested in, hence my choosing to focus on storyboarding as opposed to fully-realised short films. I love to collaborate, especially early on in the process of creating a film, where ideas are shared freely and then refined into a working script, which is where I feel I am at my best. I hope you enjoy the work I have presented here - it may not be the fully-finished, production-quality film many would expect to be produced in a course like this, but I truly believe that storyboarding is an important and under-appreciated part of the animation process, and one that I am happy to represent by pulling back the curtain and showing how films look in their early stages to a public who may have never seen animation in its most raw form like this.
Ross Brennan
Bio
Projects
Below is a brief overview of the projects that I pulled from to create the showreel above. All shots and scenes were started and completed in 2021.
Outrealm
Outrealm is a pilot animatic for a hypothetical animated show. The story concerns Codi, a recent college dropout, who returns to her hometown and meets her new neighbour Max. After accidentally unleashing an eldritch evil, it turns out that Max and his family are from the Outrealm, an alternate dimension of ghosts, spirits, monsters and magic, and it is their job to prevent beings crossing over from their world to ours. The story deals with themes of abandonment, mental health, and feeling left behind by a world that's content to go on without you, drawing from some of my own experiences of dropping out of college in 2014. Though I wasn't able to complete the 11+ minute animatic in the time available, the full script is available on my website, and I'd like to thank James Crang and Amy Kettles for providing me voice lines to animate to.
"Project Elnara"
Named for the world the story takes place in, Project Elnara is a collaborative world-building effort by myself and the members of my Dungeons & Dragons group. Paying tribute to the video games and tabletop games we grew up with, Elnara is a world where the diminutive slime creatures that you usually fight as weak enemies in games such as Dragon Quest have taken over the world. I decided to make a comedic short as a tribute to this world I've created with my friends, to celebrate our shared creativity and shine a spotlight on a world that doesn't normally exist outside of our living rooms and group chats. The 30-second short is viewable below.
"Supply & Demand"
One of the longest-running passions in my life is the setting and game of Warhammer 40,000 by Games Workshop. No matter what other projects I've been working on, I've always had something related to Warhammer going on at the same time as well, whether that's been writing my own lore and additions to the setting or painting up my armies. This was one such example. "Supply & Demand" is one of several scripts I wrote concerning the adventures of a Space Marine Chapter who are forced to take up governance of an Imperial world. I found the concept of Space Marines - genetically-engineered killing machines who spend zero time around ordinary humans and have no conception of how to deal with problems outside of mortal combat - having to handle the problems of run-of-the-mill humans in characteristically misguided and violent ways fun to work with. The full short, complete with my bad attempts at voice work, is viewable below.
Ross Brennan
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Related student work
The three students below have been a massive help to me throughout the past year-plus of lockdown, making an effort to keep the vital social aspect of university alive and helping me with my various projects. Their guidance and advice was incredibly valuable, they made the effort to take time out from their own projects to help me out and I hope I helped them in return, and in general they're just a trio of very talented people who I love working with and being friends with, and I hope you check out their work.
