Prepare for the most intense sashimi experience of your life: Electric Studios (electricstudioscreative.tv) has released its first in a planned series of in-house original animation projects with Popo, a fantastical action piece about a fearless elderly monster hunter. The 2D short follows as our hero, with her giant cleaver in tow, tracks down a mythical cephalopod … just in time for dinner.
Director Chiara Sgatti writes in the short’s description:
“The starting point was simple; we’d designed the dreadful Kraken as concept art, then having fallen in love with the beast decided we just had to build a story around it.
“It’s a Sushi Western, a bleached aesthetic that combines high-detail illustration with intensely sketched moments of movement. We cut our coat to our cloth, containing the process, reducing cel animation cost and using this sparsity of look to give things a fresh visual direction. Big shout out to King Lear for the perfect soundtrack to our visual mayhem!
“With a team formed from our in-house crew and trusted freelance collaborators it was a true labor of love that (in fairness) took a little longer than planned, but hey like the best tako, good things come to those who wait.”
Sgatti has previously directed the animated shorts The Thing I Left Behind (2019), The White Spot (2018), Hope (2014) and Sundance-selected O (2017, co-directed with Mario Radev) as well as an episode of the Visible Poetry Project series. Born in Italy, Sgatti is now based in London as part of the Electric Studios creative collective, nested within VFX/post house Electric Theatre Collective.
The Popo team also included creative director Geoff Parsons, executive producer Ben Honour, producer Naima Souza Vogt, design/compositing lead Marina Nakagawa and cleanup/color lead Bebe Ogloza. Sgatti served as lead animator on the project. Marcos Fernandes & Domnhall Malone composed the music.
Popo is the first-ever Electric Studios Original.
[H/T Stash Media]
