![]() ![]() Initially it was just a funny, surrealistic thing, like those silly rituals that we have with our close ones at home. ![]() And the more I thought about it, the wind would make them lose their hats. And when I’m constructing it, I’m thinking that maybe they parachute every time to sell their ice. But it all changes in that pre-production phase when I’m constructing the world and when I’m imagining how those characters would live every day. So, all of my characters, both from this film and my film before Nestor, had a hat or a beanie mainly for aesthetic purposes. I started doing animation relatively recently, and when I started this film two or three years ago I was still not very comfortable drawing hair on characters. GONZALEZ: That’s a funny story actually, because I actually designed the characters wearing hats before I knew that hats were gonna be important for the film. It was very interesting, just refining everything a little bit better until we got to the end result.ĭEADLINE: One thing that stuck in my mind as I watched the short was, “Why do they keep buying these hats?” Where did the idea for the hat flying off every time come from? I started the film with three or four colors, but I was always adjusting slightly until I hit the right spot that I felt would both please me aesthetically and enhance the story of the film.ĬAETANO: There were actually little tweaks you were doing as we went along. In this case, the limited color palette was really important to contrast the warmer colors of the human side of the characters with the cold, harsh colors of the outside. For me, one of my biggest concerns as a director is to find a way of combining things that I like aesthetically, but also making them important conceptually. GONZALEZ: I have three things that I always incorporate in my illustration style – use of perspective, which comes from my love of architecture, very strong dark shadows and limited color palettes. But the animation itself is traditional frame by frame animation that we draw directly on our graphic table.ĭEADLINE: Can you talk about your color choices? It’s a very small palette. It all started with sketchbooks on my graphic diary, and that was the main reference for it. ![]() So, instead I focused my energy on trying to find a way digitally to emulate the same style that I initially started drawing for the film. So logistically speaking, we would have to ship the papers back and forth and it would be a production nightmare. It was just me and Ala Nunu, and she was living in France and I was living in Portugal. Initially, I was planning to make this film only on paper, but the animation team is very small. GONZALEZ: It’s a digital animation, but it does try to emulate that more organic filling of paper and pencil. And João came on board and we’ve been doing stuff together ever since.ĭEADLINE: How did you achieve this style of animation? We’re not a regular production company, we’re a cooperative of art directors and animators that come together and try to help each other out. And from then on, João was invited to be a part of the cooperative, COLA Animation. You guys are gonna like each other.” So, that was the excuse to come together and hit it off. We were both in a festival in Portugal and she called me up and said, “Oh, you guys need to get in touch. She’s the third person responsible for this film and animated half of the film. In this case, I knew it was gonna be a film about loss, but all the tiny details of the narrative are about finding joy.ĭEADLINE: Bruno, how did you get involved?īRUNO CAETANO: So, there’s actually a person here missing, which is Ala Nunu. So, I know roughly what the theme of the film is gonna be about. I start to draw a lot regarding the house, and I try to figure out the rules of the world building I’m creating. And when I have one of those images that resonate with me in preproduction, I start to write a lot about that reality. ![]() In this case, it was an image of a tiny house attached to a cliff. JOÃO GONZALEZ: Like my other films, I started with an image that comes from my subconscious. 'The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse' Art Director Mike McCain On Evoking Mackesy's "Fluid And Gestural" Art StyleĭEADLINE: Where did the idea for Ice Merchants originate? ![]()
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