EXCESS DANGER
Builders Club collaborated with This Agency on a creative 'think tank' assignment for a cyber security firm.
Exploring "a world of excess danger", depicting the challenges and threats faced by business in the digital realm.
I was fortunate to work as the producer during the initial R&D phases of the world creation, character design development, animatic and first phases of animation and full production.
Builders Club & This. developed a story that explored how phishing scams, clickbait, malware, fake news and other nefarious elements would invade and terrorise a business landscape, prohibiting the human inhabitants from working in peace. Agents of change would then be introduced, who would descend from the skies and begin clearing up the chaotic fallout of these cyber threats - protecting, organising and neutralising the world in order to shift from nightmare dystopia, to a secure and productive utopia.
WORLD CREATION
”The jumping off point for our world was Surrealism, and how artists of this movement depicted landscapes – Graphic, often simplistic environments with a forced ‘wrong’ perspective and a central focal point. Undulating hills and a checkerboard road were a must! On top of this, we needed our two main world states (‘threat’ and ‘secure’) to follow a similar structure, so we could show the transition between the two.
The development of the look & feel of these environments was truly a collaborative process between the whole team, developing a style that sat a little different to our usual output. Starting with a range of R&D, concept art, scamps and photoshop collages, before moving into CGI. This case study details a wide variety of development work, providing an overview of character and world creation and showing how initial sketches were transformed into hyper-detailed, CGI realities.”
CHARACTER DESIGN
Builders Club collaborated with Painting Practice and Sylvie Minois during the R&D Phase to help explore a vast number of different concepts for the heroes and antagonists. Aiming to create characters that were symbolic and had personality, without being overly cliche or too ‘Disney’. A considerable amount of time was also spent experimenting with how humans (or representations of humans) could be brought into the universe, and how these could tie back to the world of ‘business’ and ‘cybersecurity.
THE FINAL FILM
Agency: This
Directed & Produced by Builders Club
CD: Rory Cahill
Art Director: Alex Hill
Executive Producer: Sophie Gunn
Head of Production & Producer: Lauren Egen
Pre-Production + Animatic Producer: Helen Randall
Art Director: Alex Hill
CG Artists: Axel Schotermann, George Barrett, Akshay Depala, Xenia Rybe, Kwan Chow, Evan Grospiron, Mikey Dowdle, Theo Nunn
Modelling: Kaan Kucuk
Concept Artists: Painting Practice & Sylvie Minois
Graphic Design: Taylar Wong
Grade: Black Kite
Audio: Zelig