The era of post post-truth. What is real and what's not, right?
Hey, you know what is real? Disinformation as a weapon to weaken minds and freedom.
A threat that now seems to have overrun the entire world.
Is it all lost? Who will stop these evil villains spreading fear and fake news?
Is superhero fatigue real? You bet it is. Right next to movie reboot fatigue and not-being-on-vacation fatigue.
That`s why we need more than superheroes.
We need the help of real, regular, common, NPC people.
Just like you, just like me. Just like……. XIKA!!!
Entering 2022. The main narrative that spanned our last years as a studio, the pandemic, felt like finally ending. Life felt great, albeit strange. And we felt a strange urge to create. All about strange feelings.
We wanted to create a piece that carried a social value. Not just for the sake of sexy animation. Something with even a small potential to raise awareness on a problem. And with a vibrant latin american identity.
"Pictured: latin american identity"
How about the destructive and strong-as-ever menace of disinformation that finds new bastions in widespread media day after day, weakening freedom in all its forms?
Now is the time to address it and make it visible.
But where to start? Disinformation has been around since ever, but recent years have seen an unscrupulous rise in scopes and targets.
Powerful and influential vectors spreading fake news to safeguard obscure interests?
Sounds like serious supervillian stuff, right?
The anguish of such unequal forces triggered ideas of heroic resistance.
Regular, common, everyday people resisting these superpowered threats.
"Superheroes superheroing"
It started sounding like a direction, uh?
The idea of playing with characters parodying the cultural and ideological productions known as superheroes felt ok, but we didn`t want to make this a superhero movie.
We wanted to reflect on the surreal and deforming experience the effects of disinformation has on the mind. And taking it to an extreme, on the body too.
And we were getting closer to election dates in all of Latin America, were disinformation goes rampant and the political scenario makes reality come closer to a Black Mirror's episode.
A quick montage on this early process ensued, and thus, the full idea was fledged before our eyes:
We were going to make a project that seeks to educate the actors of the electoral process on how to identify and prevent disinformation.
And now for something completely different, there was a good amount of serious research we needed to do to write the script. Like the pros.
We compiled our sources and started processing the data.
It was a lot of information, and a lot of possible angles. So we decided to focus on the first line of combat: disinformation IS REAL. And there are actors active in spreading it. You just have to be alert and question everything.
We had a clear goal: to create a story that could be perfectly told in less than 2 minutes. That is one of our most strong convictions: each story requires a specific amount of time to unfold properly. You just can't write a 30 page script and then crunch it in a couple of short minutes (if you have a degree in marketing or advertising of course you can).
From there, an incredibly fun collaborative process ensued in the studio, where almost everyone put something in the stew.
Clubcamping being a studio with 90% girl power, it made total sense that the main character should be a girl. The zeitgeist compelled us.
The first steps were a little slow, because we couldn't find a proper tone.
That's when we decided to write it from the perspective of the narrator. Not with the intention of keeping it, but just to make ideas flow. We would then probably leave the narrator style behind as the images got more clear.
We did a first pass, then some rewrites, and then some more.
We knew it was ready when we felt it could make Aunt Mabel question whether that picture of the president about to eat a live cat that she saw on prime time news was real (in this case, it was. But you get it).
Oh, you know us: when handed a script, we translate it into a narrative language that usually involves visual metaphors and subtext devices that aim at telling more than the script intended to.
But doing it with our own script was something that opened a whole new range of possibilities, because we could totally change and rework ideas without the usual approval process with the client.
In this case, we had a clear narrative path, but at the same time it was a blank page in terms of what images it conveyed.
That void started returning fun ideas, like the wobbly transitions, the transformations, the villains, the scenarios, the disproportionate bodies of the infected people. Well, pretty much everything. And maybe just in our minds, but it was enough to crack this first animatic.
The narration started to feel natural, and brought a parodic tone that was perfect. It felt like spoofing the genre, but at the same time carrying serious ideas.
The challenge here? Create characters and situations that would be representative of the most important or common evil actors in the disinformation war, but not too obvious.
We wanted this to raise consciousness, not to offend.
If you look closely, squint a little and turn your head sideways, you will recognise some of those a-holes.
The fun tone was already set in the animatic stage, and we wanted to reflect that on the visuals.
We weren't going to jump into the gritty superhero wagon. So creating a colorful, vibrant latin american world was a must.
It had to be very clear how disinformation altered people, both victims and perpetrators.
So we started playing with cursed morphologies, and the idea of minions with their villain masters counterparts. Deformed monsters that suffered grotesque mutations due to the exposure to destructive disinformation. They had to look instantly threatening.
As a personal challenge, we wanted to have a couple of shots where the color and render treatment changes into a sophisticated look. A homage to those hyper classic Ren & Stimpy close ups.
Those would be entirely 2D animated, so we would have to come up with a precise technical breakdown later. Niiiiice.
In contrast, our heroine would have more realistic proportions, symbolizing truth and reality.
Check this spicy character batch.
We wanted this to have a strong latin american presence, so we based the backgrounds designs in classic latin american cities we all know and love: Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Bogotà, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, etc etc.
We looked for stylized and representative imagery, not wanting to stick to a particular city, but to make a nice blend of latin americanity (this has to be a real word).
Treat yourself!
Speaking about the wobbly transitions and infected transformations, those were the first pencil tests we did. We were looking for some good auto-inflicted suffering to put ourselves to test, and particularly the transitions presented nice opportunities.
Because they involved going from one piece of background art to another, which, in case you hate art and just ignored the previous section, where heavy on objects, and gradients, and painful little details.
And we didn't want to just animate each object in comp. We wanted each one of them to have a 2D personality.
Check this pencil tests.
“But what with all that wobbly, wonky, shaky, trembly animation?”
Well, a metaphor on the unstable reality disinformation creates, of course.
In contrast, the good, human characters have more realistic morphologies and animation tones, albeit stylized.
Of course, the transitions and the Ren & Stimpy shots were the most fun to work with because they involved a lot of polishing and post production.
And there wasn't much magic involved here. Just patience and concentration. That was some great meditation.
We`ll just let the BTS do the talking.
As with the visual aesthetic, we wanted a latin american vibe to the music.
The zeitgeist also compelled us on this one, so trap, reggeton and urban music were the references we were looking for.
This wasn`t simple, as we didn`t want a track that took itself too seriously.
Check some of the previous exercises.
And now as usual, a meaty BTS batch to feel inspired in truth and justice.
CREDIT LIST:
Directed by Clubcamping
Creative direction: Mariano Fernández Russo
EP: Ana Sieglitz & Juliana Millán
Script: Carolina Cantero, Alan Pettersen, Ana Sieglitz & Mariano Fernández Russo
Lead Production: Ana Laura Aparicio
Production Assistant: Alan Pettersen
Animation Direction: Pablo Cuello
Animatic: Mariano Fernández Russo
Art Direction: Martín Vinograd
Art Lead: Juan Barabani
Color: Nahuel Ruiz
Illustration: Juan Barabani, Martín Vinograd and Ramiro Cabrera.
Layouts: Evelin Unfer & Constanza Oroza
2D Animation: Nicolas Piccirilli, Alejandro Briganti, Franco Pelliciaro, Magui Barone & Maricel Piazza
Clean up: Sofia Diaz, Alan Mohamed, Mercedes Di Santis, Celina Pavon, Gabriel Rocha & Adele Baquiast
Compositing & Motion Animation: Mariano Fernández Russo & Gabriel Rocha
Additional Compositing: Yago Lopez
Graphic Design: Adriana Matallana
Sound
Music and Sound Design: Facundo Capece & Felipe Barandalla
Sound Producer: Alan Pettersen
VO: Julieta Nieto & Ademara
Partner: Instituto Vero
Project Coordinator: Victor Vicente
Partnership Coordinator: Victor Durigan
Content: Agenor Neto
Project Coordinator: Victor Vicente
Partnership Coordinator: Victor Durigan
Content: Agenor Neto
Designer: Matheus Vieira
Brazilian Analysts: Larissa Machado, Thaís Aguiar, Camila Tsuzuki
Brazilian Analysts: Larissa Machado, Thaís Aguiar, Camila Tsuzuki
Special Thanks: Sandra Sharman & Carlos Balseiro
