Jakata Tales

A while back, my friend Nat from Xhabition studios, approached me about helping her design a personal project based on the "Jakata" tales.

P'Nat liked the look and feel of the backgrounds on my short film "The Pumpkin of Nyefar"... and wanted something in a similar vein. I took "Pumpkin" as starting reference, then developed visual ideas that were more appropriate for "Jakata". The story takes place in India, so I wanted to use design elements from Southeast Asian art. For the background styling, my wife, On Krapook, and I would sketch the locations out in pencil... I would block the designs out in color, we would pass the designs back and forth for a while... then she would add the final finishing sparkle. It was fun to work back and forth this way on the designs.

Below: Some of my exploratory character sketches for the story. These inspirational sketches were then modeled in 3D.

Bad People

My old schoolmate, Michelle Meeker, asked me to take part with 11 other animation artists in her short film "When I Grow Up."

Michelle interviewed young people aged 7-10 years-old about what they would like to be when they grow up, and then interviewed elders to find out that they dreamed of being when they were younger and where life took them. She then gave short sound clips from the interviews to individual animators. Each animator had artistic control over their own piece. The film shows what we dream about becoming as children, and where life really ends up taking us.










I called my section "Bad People", the old woman in the interview talked about her dream of becoming a doctor. But her dreams were taken away by "Very Bad People". She wasn't specific about who the "Bad People" were... but from her accent, and her age... I guessed it to be the Nazi's during WWII ... but in fact I never knew for sure.

Above and Below: My design keys from Michelle Meeker's short film "When I Grow Up."

I wanted to be as vague in my design as the woman had been in her interview. Some of the other artists in the project became upset because of my seeming "lack of research". In fact, I did a lot of research on the uniforms, medical instruments,and architectural style for the piece. But instead of being literal... I chose to create a nightmare. Uniforms that might remind one of SS troops... without being specific. I also wanted the art style to be reminiscent of WWII poster art... but again, to give only a hint of the style... without being too specific to the period.









Ironically, most of these design keys were created at the old Nazi headquarters in Viborg, Denmark. The old fire station the SS had commandeered during the war... which also served for a time as the "The Open Workshop".

"Bad People" was animated in "After FX" at my pal P'Nat's studio...
XHabition

... and here is the official trailer for "When I Grow Up."