LA+D Animation & Motion Media

The Beast is a 2-D animation about a game of Dungeons and Dragons between a father, son, and two friends. The father insists on playing the game with the family cat as a dragon pawn, while one of the son’s friends strongly disagrees with the decision and rallies the others to join her cause. The influence of this animation comes from the family game nights that my father’s side would host for my brother and me while we were growing up. We never played Dungeons and Dragons but would get in silly, heated arguments over Clue, Apples to Apples, and countless games of Monopoly. The idea for the game to be Dungeons and Dragons was for the endless imaginative nature that it has. And in the context of the animation, the cheap style of 80’s toy-selling cartoons was the inspiration for the beginning inside the world of the game. The hope for what the viewer will take away is a reconnection with their childhood and memories of their own family game nights, while also an inspiration to bend the rules a bit in their life. For the group, I believe we learned that we really can do anything we put our minds to. I would be lying if I didn’t say we were very worried to get this done on time. We felt like all the cards were against us with the timing of quarantine during the production of this film. But with hard work and perseverance, we made a film we are all proud to have worked on.