Hasta La Motion!

Brazilian graphic novel artist and writer Rafael Grampá (“Mesmo Delivery”) turned his powers to the small screen for the first time in “Dark Noir.” The animated short was his directorial debut, a commissioned work for Absolut’s “Transform Today” campaign.

The project was billed as a “co-creation” between Grampá and Absolut’s Facebook fans, who supplied concepts and drawings via Absolut’s Facebook presence.

But when it came to producing the actual animation, Grampá partnered with Red Knuckles, formerly of Passion Pictures, where they had worked heavily with director Pete Candeland.

Rick Thiele and Mario Ucci, co-founders of Red Knuckles and co-creative directors on “Dark Noir” shared some process behind “Dark Noir” with us.

Q&A with Red Knuckles

How did you guys get involved in this project?
Sid Lee approached us about “Dark Noir” in late November 2013 with the intention of making a live action short film with animated characters.

Their main reference was a project we art directed while still at Passion, Gorillaz “Stylo”, in which we turned Jamie Hewlett’s famous 2D characters into 3D animation and integrated them against live action plates.

We eventually managed to convince everyone that doing it fully animated was a good idea.

Did Red Knuckles do all of the CG animation? What about the 2D animation?
Yes. Both 3D and 2D. The main reason Red Knuckles exists is to allow us to work with the artists we admire and a lot of those artists happen to be 2D animators.

So when this project came along, we immediately pitched to Rafael the idea of having a mix of 2D and 3D animation, and he said yes straight away. So then we went after those incredible dudes — 2D and 3D — and they were all up for it, too.

Describe the process of working with Rafael Grampá. How did you work together?
Well, the fact that we are all Brazilians helped a lot. We had pretty much the same imagination, and Rafael is one of the most incredible artists we know (we were fans of him from way before). The visual communication flowed seamlessly.

He would explain the sequences he had in mind by drawing them, and to us, this is the best way to communicate.

Absolut understood Rafael’s persona very well and just let him do what he wanted to do without any interventions. With that, we were blessed with an entire studio of artists creating and making decisions 24/7. That is not something that happens often.

The film has a rich look inspired by film noir. Can you tell us a little about the look development process?
The mood of the film was in there since the first revision of the script. It was impossible for us to imagine the film any other way, so we gathered all the references that came to mind into a mood panel. This panel included “Blade Runner,” “In the Mood for Love,” anything by Christopher Doyle.

We wanted to have eveyone coming in and out of light all the time, engulfed in shadows one second and then showered by light in the next. And if the characters didn’t move on the shot, then we would create mechanisms to make the lights move instead, revealing and hiding.

What consolidated the noir look was the combination of the script with the images.

The official making of video (below) says that Facebook fans had input. What was that like?
This crowdsourcing of ideas was a big thing for Absolut, so we knew that it had to be very well planned out in order to make it work with the schedule.

The hardest ideas to accomplish were obviously posted first. People had quite a small window of time to respond, due to pressing deadlines. Even so, the response we got from it was astonishing. Hundreds of people submitted ideas and drawings that just blew our minds and gave us a completely fresh take on things!

In this case, it seems like crowdsourced aspect of the film was pretty focused. How do you feel about crowdsourced filmmaking/animation in general?
At times, we danced with the idea of crowdsourcing aspects of production like modeling and texturing, but since we had a very tight schedule, we had to keep everything in a very controlled environment.

If you have a project with a more flexible schedule crowdsourcing might work, just as long as the creative direction remains consistent. Still, artists would have to be carefully handpicked.

You guys recently left Passion to start Red Knuckles. How is it going so far? What have been some of the challenges?
Yes, we left Passion in December 2013 after having a great run there, working almost exclusively with Pete Candeland on some fantastic projects.

Red Knuckles started with the idea and the ideal of collaboration. There are many ultra-talented artists, directors, creatives, etc. out there that we want to work with. We thought the best platform to reach and collaborate with them would be via our own studio.

So far, it has been truly incredible. We got to meet those amazing people that we would not have had access to if we were associated with a single production house.

What we have set ourselves to do is a different business model where we want to be an animation studio, an artist’s house exclusively, without attaching ourselves to only one production house or director. That’s where the challenge lies: in making this model understood and needed in London.

But everyone we have talked about this were extremely happy to know that we are out and and free to do some animation. I hope we can show some more cool stuff soon.

Making Of Featurette

Credits

Written and Directed by Rafael Grampá
Animation Studio: Red Knuckles
Director of Photography: Red Knuckles
Red Knuckles Creative Directors: Mario Ucci and Rick Thiele
Producer: Monica Domanska
Original story and characters created and designed by Rafael Grampá
Lead Animator: Lucas Vigroux
3D Animators: Giovanni Braggio, Scott Beharrell Bono, Chris Whyte, Magali Barbe, Florian Mounié and Martyn Smith
2D Animators: Adrien Gromelle, Stephen Vuillemin, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Alice Bissonnet, Duncan Gist and Giovanni Braggio
Technical Director: Maïckel Pasta
Lighting TD: Patrick Krafft
Environment Modelling: Florent Rousseau
Mattepaintings: Manuel Dischinger, Ian McQue, One Pixel Brush
Global Facebook Fans:
Scene 1: Adriano Antonini
Scene 2: David Jesus Vignolli
Scene 3: Greg Fenwick
Scene 4: Nina Robra
Scene 5: Anton Kovalenko & Adri Ceesari
Scene 6: Maria Vlad
Creative Agency: Sid Lee Amsterdam
Associate Creative Director: Gill Glendinning & Roger Leebody
Account Manager: Jonah Dolan

Production Company: Jimmy Lee Amsterdam
Producer: Justin Townsend & Ezra Xenos
Voice of Vincent Black: Doug Cockle
Voice of Madaleana Proud: Ajit Sandhu recorded @Stainless Sound

Music Company: Croacia
Music Composer: Marcio Chavemarin

Music Company: Wake the Town
Sound Engineer & Music Composer: Paul Schumpter
Music Producer: John Connon
‘Paper Bones’: Written and performed by Mike Ghost

I’m delighted that Old Fangs, which has been making the rounds on the film festival circuit, is available in its entirety online. The character designs and matte paintings are gorgeous, but what drew me to this film was that it made me nostalgic for watching short films in a theater setting – where the colors wash over your entire field of vision, the soundtrack completely envelopes you, and for an extended moment you are focused solely on the story of a young wolf gingerly seeking out his father. At over eleven minutes, it’s the type of film that might get scrubbed through amidst other internet windows, but I encourage setting aside a quiet moment to let the story unfold.

Old Fangs was directed by Adrien Merigeau and Alan Holly (who work together as Cartoon Saloon (of Secret of Kells fame). Adrien and Alan were gracious enough to take the time to answer a couple questions about Old Fangs… check it out after the jump.

How did the project come about?

Adrien: I was working for a couple of years on the feature “The Secret of Kells“. I had moved to Ireland for that. I stayed in Dublin before heading down to Kilkenny and met Alan there. A year or so later I got aware of a scheme that the Irish Film Board have for funding short animated films. It’s really great, perfect for 7-8 minute films. So I wrote a script based on an illustration idea I had, used some designs from my unfinished college film and applied for the funding with the help of Cartoon Saloon’s producer Ross Murray. We didn’t get the funding the first year, because the script i had written was too vague… I had left a big chunk of the film out because it was supposed to be experimental and spontaneous. So I tried to put it into words the next year and we got the money then. That was summer 2008.

I asked Alan if he’d do storyboards with me and we started in Berlin where I was living at the time. We both moved to Kilkenny again, and eventually we directed the whole film together there, in the Cartoon Saloon studio.

The Sundance description mentions “Merigeau and company set out to create a hierarchy free-environment, in which all creative forces are free to do what they feel is best. What results is a film that looks and sounds like all their friends.” Could you describe the creative process a little more? sounds like a lot of fun!

Alan: From the beginning we both really wanted the film to be spontaneous and for everyone involved to have an input in the project. There was a first-thought best-thought approach where almost everything that ended up in the final film came from someone’s first pass, there was very little reworking or labouring over things. I think everyone was really on the same page and so the whole production was really smooth. We worked really closely with a lot of friends on the film, from the animation to the music and acting. Everyone was encouraged to draw the characters or play the music their way or just to act as themselves, as opposed to doing things a specific prescribed way, so that the end result is a combination of everyones individual inputs and not something that could have been made anywhere.

Adrien: Yes we didn’t do model sheets for the characters or anything. The characters are pretty simple anyway so it was easy for the animators to draw them their way. It’s great to see animation bits looking and moving like their animator. For the voices too, Alan did a voice, our friend Rhob did another, and Paul Young, and John Morton. It won’t come across for most, but Old Fangs does move and look and sound like us, a lot. It’s like a memory of who we were and where we were at a specific time.

The layouts for a lot of the shots are so dramatic, almost like panels from a graphic novel. Was storyboarding a big part of the process?

Alan: We did the storyboards with a lot of live action films in mind, we were thinking quite realistically and just worked through the boards really quickly and what we did that week is what you see in the film.

Adrien: Yes we worked through them quite roughly and spontaneously, but our influences were a lot about strong compositions, like the works of Gus Van Sant, Yuri Norstein, Klimt… not to be pretentious, ha, but low key timing and framing were really important to us when we did old fangs. Also the work we did on the Secret of Kells naturally influenced us towards flat and graphic compositions.

How did the character design and style come about?

Adrien: I never got to finish this college film which was terribly frustrating. But the main theme and designs i really cared for, so a lot of that went into Old Fangs. The characters shapes are simple, but the animation is very quiet which gives them somewhat of a realistic feel I think which is nice. The choice of having animal characters made sense for the story, especially the theme about growing up away from your roots. For the backgrounds, we did everything on paper with coloured inks, and it was really great not to do much computer work on them. Overall, the style came naturally from how we like drawing.

How was working with your parents on the sound? I love the contrast between the voice acting in the boys vs. the father.

Adrien: Ha. Working with my parents was great, both very natural and very strange. We couldn’t really tell them what to do, because well, its hard to tell your parents what to do. And we also wanted them to work like everyone on the film, just for them to do what they felt was best. So we gave them simple directions at the start and they gave us the finished track at the end of the production. They had a lovely approach to the writing, they made the sound effects a part of the musical composition, and they were quite good at it because they come from contemporary music, so sounds are what they do best.

Alan: Paul Young did a really nice job for the father, he brought some experience and drama to it, which was a nice contrast to everyone else’s low key performances, we treated his voice a little too.

Obligatory nerd questions: what tools did you use? how long was the entire production process?

Alan: basic stuff, pencil, paper, inks, then Photoshop, After Effects and Avid, thats pretty much it.

Adrien: and it took about 10 months from storyboards to the end of the edit. We were a bit tight with time though because the film ended up being 11 minutes instead of the production budget’s 8 minute plan. But it was pretty smooth overall.

What are you guys up to now?

Alan: We’re working on a new short now which is great to be doing again. It’s over a year now since we finished Old Fangs so it’s going to be really nice to work with the same team again. We’ve just set up our own studio, a music video for a friend of ours Jennifer Evans. We’d been chipping away at that on the side for a while so it’s going to be great all work full time on a properly funded production again.

Adrien: Alan’s film is funded by the same scheme, only the tables are turned now and the film is his story and script. It’ll be really cool, I can’t wait to start production. I’m also working on Tomm Moore’s next film called Song of the Sea as art director which is really interesting.

Upcoming screenings of Old Fangs are available here, including Toronto, London, and Sweden. Big Thanks again to Adrien and Alan for giving us a peek into their process!

made by
Adrien Merigeau
Alan Holly
Ross Murray
Rory Byrne
Martine Altenburger
Lê Quan Ninh
Laurent Sassi
Alan Slattery
Jonas Hoffman
John Morton
Paul Young
Rhob Cunningham

Robbie Byrne
Sean Mc Carron
Tomm Moore
Fabian Erlinghäuser

Posted on Motionographer

Through an online community, contests, and events, Challenge Your World connects emerging entrepreneurs to the resources and expertise they need to launch companies that restore the environment, contribute to society, and build a healthier economy.

It’s with great pleasure that I share with you the first five films from this year’s inaugural Challenge Your World 20/20.

Each year, 20 video artists create 20 wild, whimsical, and unconventional machines that solve environmental issues. If we’re going to transform the world we have to push ourselves to think differently — so these videos reject the status quo, explore crazy ideas, and blast beyond boundaries.

Want to participate? For information on how to submit a video contact Julien Vallée at video@challengeyourworld.com.

Posted on Motionographer