Designing A Cartoon Cat Goes Horribly Wrong In Uli Meyer’s ‘The Discarded’

Today’s Cartoon Brew Pick is Uli Meyer’s short The Discarded, a 10-step guide to designing a cartoon cat that quickly goes off the rails.

Any artist who has ever toiled to find the right look for one of their characters will likely relate to Meyer’s short. In it, the London-based filmmaker struggles with the design of a cartoon cat, going through a familiar cycle of rejection and frustration before his latest creation takes offense at being discarded.

While the playful interaction of an anthropomorphized cartoon animal and our own real world will likely remind viewers of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which Meyer worked on, The Discarded is darker in its tone and finale.

Meyer told us one of the main reasons he made this film was to “animate a cartoon character traditionally and add tones and rim light mattes to get a 2.5d look and combine it with live action.” It’s a methodology that he prefers to modern cg cel-shaded characters, and the result is a lot of fun. The coloring and composition are top-notch, and the cat looks and feels like a cartoon, not a photorealistic or videogame character shoehorned into a live-action scene.

Meyer also shared some of his storyboards for the short and a couple of behind-the-scenes stills of his office-turned-film set. It looks like he and the film’s crew had a blast.