Still from The Flower

Short Synopsis


The Flower is a four-minute hand drawn animated 2d short film about a flower floating down a stream in 15th-century Japan. It is a visual commentary on love and death. The project began in 1998 at Disney’s Florida Studio and was halted in 2004 when the studio closed. It was revived by director Andrew Simmons in 2021 and work has been ongoing ever since.

 

Long Synopsis


The Flower is a four-minute, hand-drawn 2D animated short: the story of a flower floating down a stream in 15th-century Japan. Told without dialogue, it touches on love, death, and honor, while offering a visual commentary on the brevity of life. The design of the film merges Eastern and Western influences, drawing on Japanese woodblock prints, especially the work of Hiroshige and Hokusai and the clean, graphic line of Patrick Nagel, and on classic Disney animated films such as Bambi.

Director Andrew Simmons, one of the original employees of the Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida Studio, developed the film there as a side project. Many of the artists behind Disney’s 1990s and early-2000s classics, including Mulan, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear, worked on it. Production on the project began in 1998 and was worked on during downtime between films. Unfortunately, when the Florida Studio closed in 2004, the film was left unfinished.

Years later, Simmons and his core crew brought it back as an independent, donor-funded production. Their aim was to keep every frame drawn at the Florida Studio and finish the rest with a diverse international team. Rough animation drawn at Disney more than twenty years ago has been cleaned up and painted by artists from Spain, the Philippines, Japan and the United States.

The Flower is the last unreleased film of the Disney Florida Studio and a tribute to the tradition of Disney’s hand-drawn animation.

 

Tech Sheet

 

Title The Flower
Runtime 3:30
Format Traditional (hand-drawn) 2D animation
Setting 15th-century Japan
Visual style Merges East and West: Japanese woodblock prints and classic Disney animation (Bambi)
Number of scenes 36
Production years 1998 to 2004 (Disney Florida Studio), then revived as an independent production
Country United States
Language / dialogue None (dialogue-free)
Aspect ratio, resolution, sound TBA
Completion date / status TBA
Premiere status TBA
Website https://theflower2dfilm.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/the_flower_animated_film/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFlowerFilm

 

Director’s Statement

 

At Disney’s Florida Studio I spent many hours learning how Disney went about telling a story, and I watched films grow and refine as the process went along. Soon I started writing and developing my own ideas, and The Flower was one of them. We pulled the film’s aesthetics from Japanese woodblock prints and from classic Disney films such as Bambi, merging East and West. Hiroshige and Hokusai, and Patrick Nagel’s simple lines and effective design, shaped it most.

When the studio closed in 2004, the film stopped with it; however, I was allowed to take all the artwork with me. The core team kept in touch over the years, and when I pitched the idea of finishing it, they all signed up. The film touches on love and death. It’s a visual commentary on how short life is, told only in pictures, the way a woodblock print speaks without words. Today the drawings we made at Disney are being completed by a new generation of artists around the world.

 

Director’s Bio


Andrew Simmons worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation’s Florida Studio from 1989 to 2004 and contributed to films from The Little Mermaid to Brother Bear, moving from cel painter and traditional film camera to final checker. He later worked at Big Idea as a digital asset manager and production coordinator on 3-2-1 Penguins. He wrote the manga TOMO: I Was an Eighth Grade Ninja, a Moonbeam Children’s Book Award medalist, and the Isaiah book series, and he adapted Bible stories for VeggieTales. The Flower is his directorial project.

 

Key Crew

 

    • Director: Andrew Simmons

    • Producers: Nicholas R. Zabaly, Kelly Simmons

    • Executive Producers: Jim Pirzyk, Ken Little

    • Associate Producers: Angelo Logahd, Jennifer Rozycki, Brent Lorbetske

    • Art Director: Jaison Wilson

    • Editor: Erika Dapkewicz, ACE

    • Composer: Colin O’Malley

    • Storyboard Artist: Tim Hodge

    • Animation Adviser: Tom Bancroft

    • Animator: Nelson Cabrera Curbelo

    • Lead Clean-Up Artist: Simin Huang

    • Background Artists: David W. Murray, Wenrui Huang

    • Additional Design: James W. Elston, Seung Kim

    • Also credited in the Production Journal: Patrick Tuorto and Ronnie Williford (original animation at Disney), Emmanuel “Eman” Codilla (clean-up), Qianhua Yu (animation)


Full credits coming soon

 

Press Contact


Andrew Simmons: andrew.simmons@theflower2dfilm.com