What do you get when a group of South African artists blend Eastern art, extinct creatures, a huge, tentacled monster, and a white mouse named Eddy the Engineer as an unlikely hero? You get something very unusual. There are Creation Myths that explain the mysterious and the grand. The Blackheart Gang, on the other hand, has given us the “Tale of How”, which tells the legend of something a bit different.
This insanely detailed and bewildering film features mythical creatures in a mystical underground realm who owe their existence to soapy water. It’s the story of how the Parana Birds (that’s “Do-dos” to you and me) are rescued from the Tentacled Monster Otto by Eddy the Engineer, in a realm called The Household. The main order of miraculous business in The Household, of course, is to purify our bath water and make our soap.
Say it sounds odd, and I say you don’t know the half of it. In fact, The Blackheart Gang would say you don’t know a fraction of it, because this film is actually only the second part of a three part story. That story in turn is part of a larger, more ambitious epic which tells the complete legend of The Household.
“We really hope to inspire people,” says Jannes Hendrikz, Compositor and Creative Director for the BHG. “This project was about beauty, sincerity and passion. We want to share that. And hopefully, for just a moment, pull people out of the chaos they have grown so accustomed to.” The tool these artists have chosen to pull us out of “the chaos”? Four minutes of chaos of their own design.
The team was greatly influenced by old Eastern art, and wanted to capture that ancient illustrative look in the film. But it took them an awful lot of work to get it.
First, illustrator Ree Treweek drew all the elements with pen on paper, scanned them, and coloured them in Photoshop. Then, Hendrikz built 3D environments in After Effects, animated Treweek’s 2D elements, and composited live action elements, like splashing water, into the scene. “We spent a lot of time blending the 2D elements and live action to create a living world with depth and dynamics. Environmental elements like caustics and volume light, helped to achieve this look,” says Hendrikz.
The 3D elements came next. The team used the Photoshop and After Effects elements as a background plate, and animated the 3D bits to match. Justin Baker, who oversaw the 3D work in Softimage XSI, modeled all the birds and developed shaders to look like Treweek’s drawings. Then, Hendrikz composited the 3D elements back overtop of the plate. For their rendering and digital work, the team was fortunate to have access to the equipment at Blackginger Visual Effects and Animation, where Hendrikz works as a compositor and designer.
The decision over which elements would be 2D, 3D, and live action, was not a trivial one because of the illustrative look the team sought to keep. The birds and the tentacles, for instance, were good candidates for 3D because of their complex animation, whereas the live action splashes of water added to the visual free-for-all. “We wanted to maintain an authentic illustrative feel, so it was important for the 3D elements to look as 2D as possible.”
Like the monster in the Tale of How, the project itself was huge and all-encompassing. The team cites two main obstacles they had to overcome in the making of this film: time and sleep. “We ignored them. We didn’t have a life for nine months,” says Hendrikz. “Put it this way… each scene had about 300 layers to animate.”
The team learned a lot during the production of the film, as well as their earlier film, “Ringo”. But Hendrikz says it’s hard to list just what they did learn. The main thing seems to have been learning how to make a film in and of itself. None of the core team members were formally trained in art, so they simply learned by doing. “We just went with the flow. Of course we learned a lot. Looking back it’s difficult to say [just what], because the stuff you learn just becomes a part of you.”
The visual results of all this work are set to a wonderful, operatic score written by the third core team member of BHG, Markus “Wormstorm” Smit, and recorded by a talented team of voice artists. The soundtrack is more than just a musical backdrop furthering the look and feel. Its lyrics, also written by Smit, provide the narrative thread.
The team has great plans for the future, and continuing their mythology. The first installment of the team’s Household chronicles is called “Old sleepy Monster”, which tells of the creation of Otto, the antagonist of “The Tale of How”. The third installment is surely on the way, provided the team stock up on caffeine and sleep while they can.
“We see The Blackheart Gang as a lifelong project,” says Hendrikz. “And the Household epic is huge, with many branches. We will probably be working on it for the rest of our lives.”
Find out more about The Household and Tale of How at the Blackheart Gang’s website. This article originally appeared in 3D World magazine issue #79.
