“The Light At the End” by Chris Burton

The Light At The End is by Chris Burton, a 26 year-old self-taught animator (“…and still learning”) based in London.

Burton writes:

“I’m actually a web developer my profession – I make films in my free time, and this – like my previous work – took six months from conception to final cut.

“Icebox Studios is just the moniker under which I show my work – the “studio” itself is little more than my desk and computer.I made the film using Blender and Gimp, both open source software, so apart from living costs the film didn’t cost anything. A friend of mine composed the music, and the sound was sampled from a creative-commons licensed website.

“I struggled quite a lot with the story details beyond the initial idea, and I actually started over and re-animated the whole thing after the first cut wasn’t entertaining enough. There are a lot of “pearly gate” comedy shorts out there, and I really wanted the divine aspect to take a back seat to the film’s underlying theme of learning to look out for yourself rather than being dependent on others.”