Sweet as Cream
Stella must avoid dairy temptation but soon faces delicious enticement when her friends introduce her to the most beautiful person she has ever met… a man made of ice cream. Who knew love could be this sweet?
Animated in Toonboom Harmony & Photoshop
Lined & Colored in Photoshop
Composited in After Effects
Audio in Premiere
Sweet as Cream Trailer

Press Kit
Runtime
03:31 min/sec
Synopsis
Stella must avoid dairy temptation but soon faces delicious enticement when her friends introduce her to the most beautiful person she has ever met… a man made of ice cream. Who knew love could be this sweet?
Production Notes:
Directed and Animated by Mary Budnitz
Barry: Nicolas Escobar
Francine: Tristin Goodenough
Stella: Mary Budnitz
Music by Jack Goodenough
Sound Mix by Mary Budnitz
Artist statement
My work typically involves some sort of humor. I like making myself laugh, but more importantly others laugh, it’s extremely gratifying. Humor can be in characters, like a man made of ice cream with sprinkle chest hair, or situational, both covering my passions of character design and writing. I would like to bring that humor and fun to television and movies, along with creating the content I wish I had growing up. I would have loved to see a fat woman in a show, who is funny but not the butt of the jokes. I wanted to create this film because I wanted to see a fat lady get some wholesome romance without questioning her partner's affection.
When you’re 22 and can’t go out, you begin to fantasize about dates, nights on the town, and the feelings that come with it. The style of the film was heavily influenced by bar hopping, neon, sweets, and city nightlife. The friends played a key role, as it’s not a girls night out without the girls. I was very lucky to have my close friends voice the characters they inspired. It really gave what were supposed to be secondary characters a bigger role with so much personality, which made the process more enjoyable when I was teaching myself how to animate in Photoshop. I had never animated in Photoshop before, but I thought it would be fun to make an immense undertaking even more difficult. It was a learning process but it gave the rich textures and illustrative touch I was looking for.
Although dairy is the tantalizing forbidden fruit of this film, it is a sweeter spin on the underlying personal experience of dating as a fat woman. I can say that being Irish and having late onset lactose intolerance is really a rough time. My inability to have dairy began when I was around 17, and inevitably got worse so I actually have to listen to it or face the consequences. During this time, I was also internalizing a fear motivated self-deprivation impulse aka I will stop any and all romantic feelings to avoid heartbreak or humiliation due to fatphobia. Later down the road, I found myself shunning the idea of dating, even though I’m a hopeless romantic, it was two powerful emotions fighting. “I like you even though you’re fat” “Whatever, you’re fat anyway” “You’re not fat, you’re beautiful”, are said everyday! Being fat felt like a dirty secret and that I had to make up for it in some way. Eventually I found myself going down the road of romance, and it was so difficult to do anything but freeze, trying to fight this self-preservation impulse. With the help of many supportive friends, I realized I was stopping myself. If this person likes me, they probably have already figured out that I’m fat, and it’s just as much a part of me as being tall, or having curly hair. The goal of this film was to have a beautiful, sexy, AND fat woman overcome a self-inflicted boundary, realizing if she had only asked, she could have been with this creamy hunk from the get go. It was important to me to have a fat woman receive unconditional love, no catch, because that would have shaped my world growing up.
Animation Tests
Development






Original Concept Zine







