Plot

'Smithy' is a two-dimensional animation, happening in a rat world. The style of this animation is hand-painting and chalk is the main material. It tells a story that rat soldiers blackmail protection fees from citizens on the pretext of protecting normal rats from abuse by owls and eventually, the owl scares these soldiers away. This animation has set in an old town where rats live peacefully. However, the peace is broken by a piece of news that from now on every rat, who lives in the town, need to submit protection fee. The army starts to collect money all day and all night. Citizens feel scared, but they have no money to submit anymore. Therefore, the residents try their best to avoid being touched by soldiers. One day the rats in a smithy fail to distinguish the candle in time and they are noticed by a soldier, who is angry with them and aims at a rat. At this moment, the small owl scares off the soldier and saves the frightened rat.—Chen Xi

'Smithy' is a two-dimensional animation, happening in a rat world. The style of this animation is hand-painting and the chalk is the main material. It tells a story that rat soldiers blackmail protection fees from citizens on the pretext of protecting normal rats from abuse by owls and eventually, the owl scares these soldiers away.

This animation has set in an old town where rats live peacefully. However, the peace is broken by a piece of news that from now on every rat, who lives in the town, need to submit a protection fee.

The army starts to collect money all day and all night. Citizens feel scared, but they have no money to submit anymore. Therefore, the residents try their best to avoid being touched by soldiers. One day the rats in a smithy fail to distinguish the candle in time and they are noticed by a soldier, who is angry with them and aims at a rat. At this moment, the small owl scares off the soldier and saves the frightened rat.

In the first half of the film, I try to maintain the overall hand-painted style of the film. With my work experience over the years, I have developed new understandings and ideas about the film, and I begin to incorporate post-production special effects and hand-painted fusion. What's very exciting is These two creative styles, which are difficult to blend, have reached a certain degree of coordination in this animated short film.

There are six episodes in the film. The first episode is that soldiers enter the city and the rat residents are scattered, the owl strays into the mouse city, and the blacksmith mistakenly treats the owl as coal. The second is blacksmith rats work hard and the soldiers patrol to collect protection fees. In the third paragraph, the rattle rat is warning and rats flee. Smart worker rats enter into pumpkins. The fourth paragraph is the rats try hard to blow out the candle, but fail so the candlelight attracts the soldier. The fifth paragraph is about rats hide in the tunnel. The fat rat farts and is kicked out of the tunnel. The sixth episode is the soldier raises his gun at the fat mouse, and the owl stand up to rescue the fat mouse.