AnimWatch - Guilherme Marcondes

This film is the result of a long-awaited collaboration between me and Daniel Bueno. We both graduated from the same architecture school and we share the same interests: cartoons, illustration, design, animation, visual arts in general. Two illustrators lost in architecture school. We first met when he was presenting his final graduation project. That consisted in a few small black and white drawings on a wall, organized in sequences as a comic strip or even a storyboard. This project was mainly a blend between art, design and illustration, and I saw a few hints of time and movement that inspired me to translate that into animation. This kind of work that doesn't fit in any specific classification is the one that inspires me most. Unfortunately, my plan didn't work out. By that time I was too busy with my first job in a production company, as an animator. But I decided that sooner or later I'd do something based on his illustrations.

VISIT THE INTO PIECES WEBSITE

A few years later, Bueno's work evolved from black and white ink drawings to handmade paper cut-outs, put together in Photoshop. This kind of modular construction fits very well in computer animation. As I have been working for four years at Lobo Filmes mainly for television and advertisement, I felt the urge to use my skills into personal work. There were no excuses anymore to delay our project. I even had a favorite illustration I would like to animate. In fact, this single image is the base of "Into Pieces".

To create the story, we met in a bar, spread a lot of Bueno's drawings over the table, drank a few beers and laughed imagining what could be happening inside those illustrations. We came up with a few gags and small scripts, and decided in the end to go on with the story of the guy trying to fit the pieces together, annoyed by the super-hero. I thought a 30 second spot would be enough to do a test, but I couldn't help making it twice that length. The animation process was so fun and immersive that I decided to go further and finish a short film. Since I was doing it alone, on my free time, it took me two months to complete it.

Starting from the original illustration, I didn't make considerable visual changes in it, apart from applying textures in the background. I even used the original colors and the portrait aspect composition, taking advantage of that to do the camera tilt down at the beginning. The process was to re-build the original illustration in After Effects from the layered Photoshop file Bueno sent me. Spreading the flat cut-outs in 3D space gave the film that so called "2.5D" look. The next step was to give the characters personality. I think the most successful detail of the spot is the subtle changes of facial expression in the main character. That was all done over a single photo of a person's eye, separated in layers, bended and twisted with a mesh warp filter.

To complete, Paulo Beto was responsible for the sound. We work together at Lobo and he does the sound design for most of the company's spots, when the audio is done in-house. He has also done the soundtrack of my previous animation short "We Hear Them Cutting". For "Into Pieces" he mixed the most improbable samples, from animal sounds to audience claps. This insertions are unexpected but, at the same time, true to the meaning of the story. I really love the result!"

--Guilherme Marcondes, September 2004