'It was the perfect subject matter for what we wanted to do,' says Dave. 'It had lots of opportunity for comedy, the characters could be stylized and cartoony, and we had plenty of reference hopping around.'

'Cane-Toad: What happened to Baz?' takes us on a four minute journey into the lives (and deaths) of two cane toad mates. Soaking in a dog's bowl with a cold beer in his hand, the overweight, uncouth Dazza ponders the possible fate of his adventurous but naïve friend Bazza, in a land where man versus toad presents an ongoing sporting challenge. Various fatal scenarios are played out in glorious technicolour as the unsuspecting Baz wanders into human territory.

Andrew and Dave are in their early twenties and met on a 3D animation course at Queenland University of Technology. Having both experienced working for clients in postproduction houses, they were eager to create a project of their own. 'In a work environment you always get bogged down with what the clients want, and on this project we could be our own clients: the people who get to make the creative decisions', Andrew remarks.

This also put a lot of pressure on the two young animators, who decided to give up work and devote themselves full time to the production of the film. They also made the decision not to apply for funding, in order to maintain independent control over the film's development. This meant six months of living off their savings, plus generous assistance from Cutting Edge Post where Dave had been working. 'Their rendering, compositing and sound facilities allowed us to take Toads to a more professional level', says Dave. The decision to output the film to HD resolution sent render times through the roof but was an inspired choice, given that 'Cane-Toad' has just received funding from the PFTC for transfer to film.

The process of creating the film was very much grounded in research and a lot of hard work on the script. Despite all the technical challenges, Andrew maintains that for a couple of animators, writing the story was the hardest part. 'It just wasn't our speciality, and coming up with ideas was really tiring.'

One way to streamline the story was to get feedback from friends and colleagues, which proved invaluable and became a regular procedure as the film developed. 'There was one night when we got all our friends, workmates, people off the street and even the dude who mowed our lawn to come and watch a work in progress of the film! We asked everyone to offer a suggestion and wrote them all down. To be honest, most of them were pretty off the wall but there were a couple of gems!' laughs Dave.

Creating an animatic from storyboards turned out to be a key part of the process, making it easier to find the pacing of the story, and allowing for radical changes well before moving to layout. Andrew drew the storyboards while Dave recorded the dialogue, to create a working edit of the film before they had even started on the 3D animation.

'That was a major thing, getting the entire film there in front of you, just 2D drawn storyboards in a movie sequence, so that you could get feedback and make changes at an early stage. If you've put a lot of effort into certain shots and different storylines, it's much harder to get rid of them at a later stage. So for us it was really important to do this before we even started messing around with the 3D side of things.'

This process resulted in the story being culled to just four action sequences, each showing a potential fate for the hapless Baz. The challenge with both characters, and particularly for the sedentary Dazza, was to achieve a high degree of facial expression to engage the audience with the toad's predicament.

'We were inspired by the documentary 'Cane Toads, An Unnatural History', where there are these really ocker old Australians,' says Andrew. 'We could just imagine these drooling old cane toads in the outback, yabbering on to each other and drinking beer. Cane toads have a pretty easy life on the whole - they're quite lazy creatures and have no natural enemies, apart from us humans trying to kill them all the time! We really wanted to get inside the cane toads' heads so we could build up a bit of empathy with the characters, particularly towards Baz when he gets killed.'

Andrew and Dave used Maya throughout to create the character rigs (the skeletal and animation control setup). To achieve the subtleties of facial expression they decided to use a bone driven facial animation system rather than morph targets. This turned out to be the most technically challenging part of the animation process.

'What generally happens is that you build up a library of different mouth and eye shapes and morph from one shape to another, in a linear direction. What we did was to actually put bones, a skeletal system, into the face, which gave us more control over the movements of the mouth, especially with the big mouths that cane toads have. We put a lot of work into getting the lip synch right, and also getting a lot of expression in the eyes and eyebrows as well. Cane toads have weirdly shaped eyes, not the easiest things to get expression out of, but we put a lot of effort into getting them to come alive.'

This was especially important for the Dazza character, who has the only speaking role but is confined to the dog bowl throughout the film. 'We had a lot of focus on him but because he is restricted in his stance, we couldn't rely as much on body language as animators usually would. The face really had to carry those scenes for us, so we had to really push it as far as possible,' Andrew relates.

The success of the facial expressions is also a result of some serious preliminary research. 'We sat down and read a book called 'The Artist's Guide to Facial Expressions', written by a drawing instructor who studied how the face works and how the different poses it makes relate to the expression of emotion. Even though it's not an animation book it really served us well to have a look at it. We also watched a lot of live action films frame by frame and sussed out how the face works, which was really fascinating.'

Another character aspect which had to be really authentic was Dazza's voice. For the initial work in progress Dave recorded the dialogue himself, but for the final version the skills of professional voiceover actor Paul Davies were employed. According to Andrew, this was money well spent.

'When we were doing the animatic we had a temp track going which was hilariously shocking, but for the final thing we knew we had to go the professional route because it brings so much life to the whole animation. Paul did a couple of different versions and we picked one that we really liked and went with that. The clarity of his voice, and the richness and depth, really worked well, particularly when we got to the animation stage and were able to pick up on a lot of nuances of the voice.'

Despite having to pay for professional voiceover, friends in the right places allowed for cost cutting in other areas of sound. Sound engineer Angus Gibbons from Cutting Edge fell in love with the film at an early stage, and created the detailed sound effects which considerably enhance the impact of the film. The quirky music was sourced from a musician friend who had recorded an original album, with the aptly named track 'Risk!' proving a perfect fit for the film.

Throughout the process of working on the film, Andrew and Dave kept an online log to record their progress, including achievements, challenges, and lessons learned. The original schedule for the film was based around the entry date for the Siggraph computer animation festival, which created a series of deadlines along the way. So it was a big disappointment when the film didn't make the cut.

'The festival wanted a pretty much complete version of the film, but we hadn't really completed it at that stage,' explains Andrew.' We'd got all the animation done but it wasn't looking nice, and the sound was just off the website. At the time all our schedules depended on the second submission for the festival, so when that happened they started to slide a little. But in hindsight it was a good thing, because if we'd been forced to get the film in on time a lot of the details you see in the final film wouldn't have been there, and it wouldn't have been anywhere near as finished.'

'Cane-Toad' has since enjoyed success at Australian festivals, including its premiere at the Brisbane International Animation Festival, where it screened as the opening film. The film also made the finals of the AEAF and won prizes at several local festivals. 'The Woodford Folk Festival short film competition has been the most memorable screening for me so far,' recalls Dave. 'Toads screened first and was the victim of every technical hitch under the sun. But when it finally played through properly, you couldn't hear what Dazza was saying because the audience were laughing so much. I think the jolty start served to build anticipation, but at the time I was sweating a bit. We ended up winning the Audience Favourite prize and First Place - you couldn't be happier with that!'

Despite plans to follow the festival circuit for the year ahead, the film was always intended for an internet audience. This was another important factor in ensuring that the story was properly developed. 'I've seen some brilliant animation and effects on the internet, but if the story doesn't grab you, you just switch it off. Like TV, internet audiences have a shocking attention span, so we wanted to keep them interested the whole way through', explains Andrew.

The website www.cane-toad.com currently shows a teaser from the film, but once it has completed its festival screenings the entire film will be available for online viewing. Andrew and Dave also plan to post tutorials on the website, to guide other aspiring animators through the processes involved in various aspects of the film, from story through to rendering and compositing.

'We'd always planned the website to be a big thing: we want to show a lot of behind the scenes material and in a way give back to the general 3D community, in that we've gained a lot of knowledge from the internet over the years. We're still working on the tutorials but the first ones that are almost done will be technical ones, like rigging - the skeletal process - and specifically the facial animation. We thought that would be interesting to start off with because you don't need to see the whole story to be able to understand what's going on.'

For both Andrew and Dave, animation is a boundless art form with the capacity to create to a very high level. Often the main challenge is to get the work finished, given the infinity of choices available to the animator. 'Keep things simple and feasible,' advises Andrew.' I see a lot of people start shorts and they just don't finish them. The main thing is to know how long it takes, and where to cut corners'. Andrew cites his experience working for a games company as providing useful lessons about shortcuts, and believes that professional experience can really teach animators to become efficient in their work. 'In a production environment where you've got a budget it's very strict, so you learn a lot of good habits.'

The exposure of 'Cane-Toad' has already brought its creators a degree of notoriety within the 3D industry. Both agree that a short film can be an effective calling card, as well as a learning experience in itself.

'I think the great thing about a short as opposed to a showreel, which is generally how people promote their own work, is that it really has that grabbing feature of character and story,' states Andrew. 'It's a lot easier to watch and I think story is probably the most important thing in any short film. We knew that if the story worked, the animation was a given. But the story was always the one that was up in the air for us.'

Andrew hopes that in the future we will see more fully animated films aimed at adult audiences. 'I'd like to see things get a lot more mature as far as animation is concerned. It's still perceived as a very kids and family oriented thing, particularly in Western cultures, and I'd like to see it move more towards adult oriented themes, like those in live action films. We're seeing a lot more of it now, like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but I'd like to see fully animated films where you can really push the boundaries of story and style'.

For both Andrew and Dave, 3D animation is where their hearts and talents lie. Dave sums it up: 'For me, animation is the ultimate challenge. You're taking an inanimate object and channeling all your experiences and ideas through it to bring it to life. Then on top of that, you have to tell a story through your character. So believable motion is just the beginning. There really is no limit to how far you can go, and that's what keeps me excited. No matter how far I get with my skills, I know that I will always keep on learning.'