Lil' Guardian Pyro was not my first attempt at an animated short, but it was my first short working with a crew, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  For this short I wrote, directed, animated all sequences apart from one, and modeled all three of the doll "actors".

The majority of the assets in the short are used (with permission) from the video game Team Fortress 2, and indeed the lead characters of the short (Voodoo Spy, Lil' Angel and Lil' Devil, Pocket Medic) are based off of actual in-game content.  The cartoonish, Norman Rockwell / J.C. Leyendecker artstyle of Team Fortress 2 really inspired me to tell a story of what would happen if the over-violent RED vs BLU warfare depicted in the game extended to the tiny doll cosmetic items that the player can equip.

This short was a submission to the 2013 Source Filmmaker Annual Saxxy Awards, a competition geared exclusively toward animations created using the animation software Source Filmmaker. Lil' Guardian Pyro won Best Overall for that year and myself and my crew were awarded with a free trip to tour Valve Software HQ in Bellvue Washington.