Mia Kilgour
PRODUCER / ILLUSTRATOR - MIAKILGOUR@ICLOUD.COM
MIA KILGOUR
A SPECIAL GIFT (2023)
2D Animated Film, 5 Minutes 21 Seconds
Directed by Kody Lindquist
Determined to get his friend a gift for christmas, a little moth adventures out to find the perfect present.
But along the way, he comes to realize that the true value of a gift is not determined by its price and quality, but rather by the love and effort put into it.
ROLES: Producer, Concept Artist, Animator, Clean-up Artist
"A Special Gift" has won the following awards from Griffith Film School; 'Best Animation Production Management', 'Best Animation Director', 'Best Character Animation', 'Best Animation Background Art' and 'Best Animation Music Composition'.
Producers Statement
I was inspired by the heart warming themes of the story, as there has definitely been a time in my life where I wanted to give someone a gift but couldn’t afford it.
What I love about "A Special Gift" is that it teaches that not everything can be solved with money. And especially the team who proved a gift means a lot more when it’s made with love, passion and care. "A Special Gift" was a project that taught me a lot about what it takes to be a producer, assisting in creating a story that can teach lessons that I would have wanted to have learnt when I was younger.
About The Production
'A Special Gift' was a very ambitious student film right from the pitch, with the main criticism the film received being 'is it feasible' seeing as it was a fully hand drawn film. Originally I started on the team as a concept artist working on the logo since I was already Producer for 'The Tragic Life of a Fishman'. The original Producer for the film ended up stepping down to an assistant position and with there not being a lot of people who were up to stepping into the position I offered my help, which lead to me becoming their Producer.
Coming onto the film I had to adapt to finding out what was and wasn't working for the production. One of the biggest challenges during the beginning of production was communication and team morale, people were nervous about posting their work where others could see and scared of revisions. I talked to both the artists and the Director to set plans into place and show that things were going to change.
Simplifying character designs, rendering styles of the backgrounds and most importantly helping the director construct helpful and nice critique when they wanted revisions. This helped the team become closer and after all of these changes were put in place I saw a difference in the community, people were lifting each other up, complimenting each others work and providing help to one another.
Below I have included snippets of the trackers I used during production along with our timeframe for completing the film.
