An animated short, 2024

Dear Monica

A letter to my mother, written on screen by a mouse who lives in Shanghai. Every line says that things are fine; the pictures say what the letter leaves out. One minute thirty-eight, drawn mostly frame by frame.

Year: 2024, finished in April
Role: Director, animator and writer. Drawn, filmed and edited by me.
Institution: College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University
Status: Online on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

Dear Monica, 1:38. The lines are written on screen in Chinese; English subtitles are on. Sound on: the music is part of it.

01The letter

Twenty-one lines, and every one of them says that things are fine

The film has no narration but the letter itself, written on screen as the mouse writes it. Click a line to jump to it in the film.

Then five titles, over the desk and the skyline · · · ·

02The mouse

I chose a mouse not only for its vulnerability, but also for its persistence and quiet intelligence.

In the film I portray myself as a mouse: an overlooked, cautious creature surviving in the vast, indifferent city of Shanghai. The mouse is a way to make fragility and powerlessness visible, and the film is a personal expression of generational disconnection as much as a reflection on the pressure of surviving in a city today.

Storyboard page 1 — The storyboard, five pages: the mouse on the phone and writing, the hexagon stair, the circle on the square, the hands, the fall. As the pages survive in the 2025 portfolio PDF.

Storyboard page 2 — The storyboard, five pages: the mouse on the phone and writing, the hexagon stair, the circle on the square, the hands, the fall. As the pages survive in the 2025 portfolio PDF.

03The city

Three kinds of tower

To build the setting I drew on the dense residential blocks of Beijing’s Pixel complex, the corporate skyline of Lujiazui in Shanghai, and the lone verticality of medieval towers. Together they stand for compression, surveillance and emotional distance, which is how the protagonist’s inner world feels.

The Pixel complex, BeijingModular density and anonymity: stacked, repeated windows, a trapped routine, depersonalised living.
Lujiazui, ShanghaiAmbition, pressure and the scale of urban capital: the skyline dominates while the individual feels ever smaller.
Medieval towersSolitary and fortified: emotional defence and inner distance, verticality as a metaphor for internalised strength and isolation.

Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1730s — **Interior of the Pantheon, Rome** Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1730s

The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560s — **The Tower of Babel** Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560s

Houses of Parliament in the fog, Claude Monet, c. 1903 — **Houses of Parliament in the fog** Claude Monet, c. 1903

The Bedroom, Vincent van Gogh, 1888 — **The Bedroom** Vincent van Gogh, 1888

A Gothic nave, painter not on record; its vault is laid over the stair — **A Gothic nave** painter not on record; its vault is laid over the stair

Paintings pinned while the settings were drawn: a dome, a tower, a city in fog, a room, a nave. Two more references, Edward Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea and Joan Miró’s Harlequin’s Carnival, are still in copyright and are named, not shown.

The endless stair, with a cathedral’s vault laid over it

Lujiazui, photographed; the white hexagonal towers drawn over it

The same view with its colour pulled apart, as in the film

04Frame by frame

What the film is made of

Ink drawings animated frame by frame, the city’s photographs drawn over, a 3D stage for the drawn mouse to walk on, and, near the end, the desk the film was made at. Twelve frames, in order.

0:02The mouse writes. Ink on paper, frame by frame.

0:10Shanghai: photographs, the towers drawn over in white, the colour pulled apart.

0:16The endless stair: a 3D hexagon stage, the mouse drawn on top.

0:32The mouse, a line of black sheep behind it, circling.

0:38Hands holding the mouse: white line on green, frame by frame.

0:46The fall, over a field of typed characters.

0:52Work: the hexagon towers again, a crowd behind.

1:06Then the real desk, filmed, and the titles: I Become A Butterfly.

1:12Bye my Shanghai, byebye my life: hand-drawn fireworks over the city, which Runway Gen-2 set in motion for a few seconds from the composite.

1:15The title, handwritten, after the end.

What this record can't say

The letter is the whole script. Nothing is on record about where the film was shown or how it was received, beyond its being on YouTube.
The drawn frames exist only inside the film. The storyboard survives as five small images, and there is no count of the frames drawn.
The music is two existing songs, credited in the film; this page claims no rights to them. Some backgrounds use footage that is not mine, and the film credits photographs and sounds from friends.
The English subtitles are a translation made for this page; the film’s own lines are Chinese.
Two of the references, Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea and Miró’s Harlequin’s Carnival, are named but not reproduced, because they are still in copyright.

AI use

A few seconds of the city in motion near the end were generated with Runway Gen-2 from my own skyline composite; the fireworks over it are drawn by hand. The English subtitles on this page were translated with AI assistance.

Details

Title: Dear Monica. An animated short, 1 min 38 s: a letter to my mother from a mouse who lives in Shanghai.
Medium: Animated short, 1 min 38 s, 4:3 · ink drawings animated frame by frame · photographs of Shanghai and a 3D hexagon stage · the lines in Chinese, English subtitles on this page
Skills: Storyboarding · frame-by-frame animation · compositing · editing
Tools: Photoshop and a camera, as the working files show

Music, as the film credits it: Shanghai by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and Pendulum Man by Bark Psychosis. The film also credits photographs and sounds from friends. The stills are frames of the film; the three mouse drawings are working files; the five storyboard pages survive only in the 2025 portfolio PDF. A few seconds of the city in motion near the end were generated with Runway Gen-2 from my own skyline composite; the fireworks over it are drawn by hand. The five reference paintings shown are reproductions of works in the public domain. The English subtitles were added for this page, translated from the film’s own lines.