The Puub’e Gift: Designing and Producing a 2D Animated Short Film through Visual Storytelling

Authors

  • Muhammad Fazrulhelmi Ahmad Department of Information Technology, Centre for Diploma Studies, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Pagoh Higher Education Hub, 84600 Pagoh, Johor, Malaysia Author
  • Nagginah Krishna Moorthy Department of Information Technology, Centre for Diploma Studies, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Pagoh Higher Education Hub, 84600 Pagoh, Johor, Malaysia Author
  • Alia Ameera Safiyah Md Fauzan Department of Information Technology, Centre for Diploma Studies, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Pagoh Higher Education Hub, 84600 Pagoh, Johor, Malaysia Author
  • Muhammad Afif Danial Johan Department of Information Technology, Centre for Diploma Studies, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Pagoh Higher Education Hub, 84600 Pagoh, Johor, Malaysia Author
  • Suhaila Basar Department of Information Technology, Kolej Komuniti Pasir Gudang, 61 Jalan Taman Scientex, 81700 Pasir Gudang, Johor, Malaysia Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37134/trij.vol2.1.7.2026

Keywords:

2D Animation, Visual Storytelling, Family Bonds, SDG 4 Quality Education

Abstract

2D animation is a creative medium that combines visual design, movement, sound and storytelling to communicate values in a form that can be understood by young audiences. This paper presents the design and production of The Puub’e Gift, a diploma-level 2D animated short film intended to portray love, empathy and family bonds through visual storytelling. The objective of this project is to design and produce a 2D animated short film entitled The Puub’e Gift that authentically portrays the values of love, empathy and family bonds through visual storytelling. A creative production approach was applied through three main phases: pre-production, production and post-production. The pre-production phase involved idea development, target audience identification, scriptwriting, character design and storyboard planning. The production phase focused on asset creation, animation, colour, lighting and composition, while the post-production phase involved editing, audio synchronization, sound design and final rendering. The main production findings indicate that expressive character design, contrastive colour and lighting composition, and controlled scene pacing were the most significant visual storytelling elements in supporting the project objective. Character expressions and protective gestures were used to represent empathy and care, warmer tones were applied to suggest affection and family connection, and darker or cooler tones were used to separate conflict from emotional comfort. The final output is a completed 2D animated short film supported by production materials and technical workflow documentation. 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Atsalaki, K., & Kazanidis, I. (2025). Combining virtual reality visual novels and social stories to support social and emotional development in children with autism spectrum disorder. Applied Sciences, 15(12), 6584. https://doi.org/10.3390/app15126584

Coughlan, H., Quin, D., O’Brien, K., Healy, C., Deacon, J., Kavanagh, N., Humphries, N., Clarke, M. C., & Cannon, M. (2021). Online mental health animations for young people: Qualitative empirical thematic analysis and knowledge transfer. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(2), e21338. https://doi.org/10.2196/21338

De Leeuw, R. N. H., Kleemans, M., Buijzen, M., & van der Laan, L. N. (2024). How stories in the media can be meaningful in children’s lives. Journal of Children and Media. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2023.2247322

González-Martín, C., Carrasco, M., & Oviedo, G. (2022). Analysis of the use of color and its emotional relationship in visual creations based on experiences during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainability, 14(20), 12989. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142012989

Hosap, W., Khundam, C., Preeyawongsakul, P., Vorachart, V., & Noël, F. (2023). The influence of light and color in digital paintings of environmental issues on emotions and cognitions. Informatics, 10(1), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics10010026

Ito-Jaeger, S., Perez Vallejos, E., Curran, T., & Crawford, P. (2022). What’s up with everyone? A qualitative study on young people’s perceptions of cocreated online animations to promote mental health literacy. Health Expectations, 25(4), 1633–1642. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.13507

Kleftodimos, A. (2024). Computer-animated videos in education: A comprehensive review and teacher experiences from animation creation. Digital, 4(3), 613–647. https://doi.org/10.3390/digital4030031

Praveen, C. K., & Srinivasan, K. (2022). Psychological impact and influence of animation on viewer’s visual attention and cognition: A systematic literature review, open challenges, and future research directions. Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, 2022, 8802542. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/8802542

Shen, J., Mire, J., Park, H. W., Breazeal, C., & Sap, M. (2024). HEART-felt narratives: Tracing empathy and narrative style in personal stories with LLMs. Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 1026–1046. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.emnlp-main.59

Downloads

Published

2026-07-23

How to Cite

Ahmad, M. F. ., Moorthy, N. K. ., Md Fauzan, A. A. S. ., Johan, M. A. D., & Basar, S. (2026). The Puub’e Gift: Designing and Producing a 2D Animated Short Film through Visual Storytelling. TVET Research & Innovation Journal, 2(1), 62-71. https://doi.org/10.37134/trij.vol2.1.7.2026