What is Naisväki?

Naisväki is a student animated short film I directed in Turku University of Applied Sciences, which I consider to be my first proper animated short. It was done in 2D animation using Toon Boom Harmony. The film tells the story of a burnt out housewife who finds a new flame in an unexpected place. 

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The story handles the themes of expectations placed on women, liberation, community, and spirituality, wrapped up in an atmosphere of a Finnish home from the 70s and some motifs from Finnish mythology and nature. One of the sources of inspiration for Naisväki is my mom and her group of friends - a bunch of fun middle-aged spiritual women I happen to have been raised by.

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The name can be roughly translated as "Womenfolk", but the word väki can also mean a sort of magical power or magical folk in Finnish mythology, so the name can also refer to women's magical powers or refer to women as magical creatures!

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Creation

Naisväki came to be out of necessity. We had to pitch an idea for an animated short for school, and Naisväki is what I ended up coming up with. It received enough votes to go into production and now here we are. Despite this maybe a little uninspiring backstory, I am quite fond of this project and think there's a lot to be proud of here.

 

The creative team behind Naisväki consists of mainly four people: me, Kusti Sinkkonen, Sysi Hiltunen and Pinja Peltonen (all of whom are amazing artists by the way!). Because it's such a small team, everyone has done a bit of everything. To list some things I've done for the project: I have written the majority of the script, designed the main character, done quite a bit of directing and producing as well as animated, done clean up and helped with editing and sound design! ​

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What have I learned?

To get the obvious out of the way, working on Naisväki greatly improved my animation skills as well as helped me learn to use Toon Boom. More importantly though, it gave me experience of working on an animated film and all the unique steps and challenges it involves. It also helped me understand working on a creative project in a team better: finding the role in the team, dealing with artistic differences, understanding and channeling different people's abilities and managing the team's morale are all skills that I have improved thanks to Naisväki.

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Because it was our first proper animated short, we also obviously made a lot of mistakes as we went, but that means learning from them. I have definetely learned the importance of properly planning ahead, understanding the available resources, and scheduling, by not giving them enough thought at the beginning of production. Good thing I get to apply this information in future projects! ​​​