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LE FUMOIR BTS & CONCEPT ART
10.21.2025
Happy Tuesday. This week, I've got some additional behind the scene content to share regarding LE FUMOIR.
We shot LE FUMOIR in one night over the course of a couple hours. Lucky for you, I got my girlfriend to take some behind the scenes videos and photos of the process. Below are a couple of those BTS photos from set... I'll comment every once and a while.
BEFORE DA SHOOT...
I feel like for every set I've been on, the process of setting up usually takes longer than the director thinks it will. LE FUMOIR was no exception, but it wasn't anything crazy. These are all photos from before we began shooting, with my amazing crew building up the light, sound, and camera equipment as the sun set.
Here's a picture of me and Bob starting to run our lines to make sure we were completely memorized. Something I wanted to guarantee was that Bob was going to be consistent with his character's voice.
Something you can see in the bottom left of this image is me, awkwardly opening the cigarette box... For this short, we used prop cigarettes filled with minty herbal shit. Something I read in the reviews online was that they had an awful taste, but looked great on camera. I can... attest to both, personally. Something I didn't expect was that Bob and my DP Cedrik actually loved the taste of them.
SHOOTING BEGINS
Before shooting could begin, we had to figure out an angle that we could place the lights where I'd be able to just duplicate the animation layer and put it directly behind the FISH. (Rather than drawing every frame individually.)
When we began shooting the very first take, I remember realizing that both of our shadows were doubled and were overlapping...
I vividly flashed forward in time to myself in the editing process beating my past self up... So, to avoid any future beatings, I reluctantly said CUT!!! and asked my gaffer to adjust the lights one last time...
We moved on to our individual close-ups, and before I knew it we had wrapped. We didn't want to keep our crew too long, so at some point me and my Assistant Director Nat decided to call it for the night.
We had the iconic and infamous filmmaking moment where I said "That's a wrap!" and we all cheered and clapped. Following that, we put the light and sound equipment away as Bob started eating dinner in his car. Before my crew left, though, my girlfriend and I had a gift for them all...?!
She carved a linoleum print based on a drawing I made two weeks prior. I love how they came out and I hope my crew cherishes them... Due to the nature of printmaking, they're all slightly different based on how the ink was applied and certain characteristics of the paper. More than anything, I wanted the cast and crew to walk away from the set with something to remember it by and I think we accomplished that.
CONCEPT ART
Reflecting on this stuff is really funny now, because I've drawn this FISH like thousands of times since through the animation process. But, he first took shape on these sketchbook pages...
I debated whether the mayor cutaway gag was gonna be human or another animated character, and played with the idea of a SHARK guy. You can see that unused character here, as well as the concept for the funeral shot.
Here's a page full of different FISH expressions. I was still figuring out his head-shape, so alot of these are really rough. Still, though, it's really fun to see him at such a prepubescent stage of development.
This is the loose storyboard me and Cedrik followed on set. I was still figuring out the exact way the VFX was going to work, but it was actually a really handy visual to show my crew to explain the madness that was going to happen in post-production.
Even though it's not the traditional storyboard format, it lent a hand in influencing us on-set. We did push back the close-ups a significant amount, and decided not to tilt the camera 45 degrees. Looking back, that type of shot would probably look better if this was a fully animated cartoon.
I think that's about it as far as concept art goes... Here are some recent doodles of FISH that I've done over the past week or so. His design is really addicting to me, but maybe that's just because I spent so long drawing him. Who knows...
POSTERS
So, I love promoting my work. Especially in the weeks after its release if I don't think it's been blessed by the YouTube algorithm, (it only surpassed a fifty views a couple days ago.)
I decided to design and print a couple full color posters to promote not only the short, but the merchandise too.
If you go to college with me, you might see them if you walk around town... Can you find them all?
OK BYE
Alright, that's about everything I wanted to touch on as far as BTS and Concept Art goes. Believe it or not, LE FUMOIR actually did really well on TikTok and it got a lot of really nice comments. One of my favorites was someone asking "smoke out da gills?!" to which someone else responded "hehe, talk about smoked fish...!" which I thought was really sweet. Thank you to anyone who reached out / shared this short.
And, thank you if you came up to me in person to compliment me after watching. Sorry if I was a little awkward, but it's probably fine.
I'll see you next time, when I figure out what to post about next. Maybe some stuff I've been drawing in my sketchbook or I'll talk about some music I've been making. I'll figure it out.
(This was the first blog post to be dual-posted on both GIGOEWORLD and the @gigoestudios Instagram... let me know if you love or hate that.)
As always, remember to hit that bell.
LE FUMOIR
10.07.2025
Welcome... to GIGOEWORLD!!! I'm GIGOE! Seems like you've drifted onto my planet... or crash landed, or found some way onto my exosphere... Either way, I welcome you to where I'll be posting about my art, music, & film projects for the next little while.
You're welcome to stay as long as you want, but just don't get too clingy. I'm not great with roommates, so you can find shelter under a rock or in a cave somewhere.
LE FUMOIR
With formal introductions out of the way...
My film LE FUMOIR is OUT NOW!!! It was just screened for the first time at my friend's Film Friend Screening presented by ROMNKIK tonight, October 7th. Huge thanks to everyone who made this project possible... I'm very grateful. You can watch now on the GIGOE STUDIOS YouTube channel:
Along with the film's release, I've also relaunched this website today... with new UI and all sorts of changes!!! Can you spot them all? (Probably not)
LE FUMOIR CLOTHING?
ON TOP OF ALL THAT, I've also prepared some items you can buy and put on your body or wall...
Immerse your closet in the world of LE FUMOIR, with the commemorative SINGLES collection. Within, several shirts of varying price -- donning the short's LOGO, slightly homoerotically posed CHARACTERS, and a STILL from the film itself. Additionally, we've got some stickers and a poster, too. If ya nasty.
Click here to check it out :)
INSPIRATION
Inspiration is a silly thing bro. Anything can inspire the next Mozart or Van Gogh to make something great. You might find something inspiring in the way an old man hums to himself or the way his little dog jumps up and down. On the other hand, I feel more like a bum on the street making drawings in the mud with a stick than a Modern Day Mozart... If you've read this far, I'm gonna assume you've watched my film and I can share spoilers now. SPOILERS BELOW!!!
You might be asking yourself: "Man, I wonder why this guy decided to make a film with a talking fish in it that shit was weird.🙄"
And to that, I honestly agree with you. But I would feel like the biggest scam artist in GIGOEWORLD if I didn't mention some of my inspiration...
Firstly, last semester (Spring 2025) my Editing professor showed me a film called Birds by Katherine Propper. It's a short film full of authentic, fly-on-the-wall style filmmaking which I fell in love with.
Immediately after my Editing class, I went to a quiet place, bought a brownie, and started to write a fly-on-the-wall script of my own. I wanted a scene observing two people in an awkward conversation, where one of them wants the other to open up more than they're willing to.
Somehow, within the writing process, it came about that one of them would be a talking, animated cartoon fish. Immediately, I had Bob Beathard in mind. He has this great deep voice that I knew would be perfect for the character, and I knew he had been interested in voice acting (even if this approach was a little strange.)
Katherine Propper went on to direct a feature-film called Lost Soulz, with a similar premise to Birds, where the characters in the film are based extremely closely on real people. Following SoundCloud rappers touring America trying to make it big, each actor plays caricatures of themselves. To be frank, me and my girlfriend got about 2/3rds of the way through before remembering we had some homework to do, so I actually haven't seen the ending yet. BUT that first two-thirds was very good and I loved it. Now that LE FUMOIR is out, I should probably get around to finishing it...
MUSIC & SOUND DESIGN
For this film, I wanted to depict an off-screen environment which the audience could fill the blanks with in their head.
Just perfectly off-screen, a bustling ___ full of people ___ing before an important ___ event... (You have to fill-in-the-blanks.)
The only thing that's given to you is the fact that it takes place outside a Restaurant and Art Gallery, though easy to miss if you don't catch it in the beginning.
After much careful thought of what a fancy art gallery would sound like, I settled on kitchen sounds, light murmured talking, and two jazz tracks I produced. And since they're outside, I also added some car sounds panned to the right. I'm hoping to get the two songs I made for this short on Spotify soon, but it might take a while before it does. SORRY!
For now, I can tell you the names of the two tracks:
01. ANGELFISH
02. MAYBE IN A VAN
ANIMATION
Obviously, you can't just press a button and have a cartoon fish in your short film. (Unless you want it to look like shit)
This film was actually my submission for the Film Program at TXST, so I only had about a month of post-production after filming before it was due. Luckily, I had been doodling the little fish guy for a couple weeks at this point, training me to be able to draw him quickly and efficiently. Noticeably, he kind of changes slightly from the beginning to the end. (That's what a month of drawing the same guy hundreds of times does to a character.)
Something I wanted to achieve with this film was intractability you just can't get in a recording booth. The last thing I wanted to do was have one character's lines recorded on-set, and the other's done a week later in a different room. There's certain characteristics to recording in different rooms that just don't feel right. For instance, the sound quality of different microphones, or the space of the room... An alleyway outside has a different spatial quality than a soundproof recording booth.
So, I decided early on that we'd film the short with Bob to the right of me, and record clean plates to cover him up in post. (Thank you to my crew for trusting the process.)
For about 4 weeks, I woke up at 8am, made a shitty instant coffee on my stove, then sluggishly made my way to my computer. I tried to complete one shot every 2-3 days. Certain days, I'd focus on animating the head, and other days I'd focus on the body. And, for the days where I didn't want to do anything... I went on long walks and animated in my head.
I remember being extremely discouraged the day after a certain event and not wanting to work at all... only to go on a walk and be met with hazardous winds and heavy rainfall... as well as a thunderstorm warning. Part of the reason I went on the walk was because we were out of milk, so I ran and yelled my way to the gas station and got some. Weirdly, I felt better after that??? So, I stuck with it, and I'm glad I didn't give up! :)
The hardest shot was definitely the long ass continuous take about half-way through. Below is an incredibly low quality gif of what I'm talking about...
Once I got into the flow of things, the days started blending together and before I knew it the entire short was animated...!? The only thing left was compositing the animation over the footage in After Effects which wasn't too bad. The most technical thing about the process was his shadow, which I did by tinting the wide-shot layer black and blurring it a little.
UNTIL NEXT TIME...
Wrapping up my first post here in GIGOEWORLD, I'd like to tease a couple things coming up...
It's very likely that my next blog post will show off some more behind-the-scenes photos and videos taken on the day of LE FUMOIR's filming... Maybe a look at some concept art as well? Yes... maybe...
Also, over the summer I produced a dozen or so tracks that were planned to come out in late August or early September. Obviously, that didn't happen, and this website stayed hidden and everything I made for it is currently unreleased. I'm doing everything I can to release it either late October or early November. Wish me luck bro... Some legal hurdles to jump first... Music Distribution is difficult...
Either way, you're gonna wanna stay up to date with my socials because I've got some cool shit on the way...
IG: @gigoestudios
YT: gigoe studios
And make sure to hit that bell...?
