Pete's Story - Animation Breakdown

This is a basic explanation of the animation process in Pete’s Story: https://vimeo.com/danielbruson/petestory

Based on Pete's true account and on the voice over recording, a rough storyboard was created together by Lovers, NSPCC and me. After that, the animatics were created frame by frame digitally, then printed on regular A4 sheet (in yellow ink, the easiest color to extract later in post production).

All frames were then painted with a very watery acrylic ink, almost as a watercolour. I’d paint sixty to seventy frames a day, trying to maintain a fluidity from one to the next, making the shapes look at the same time sufficiently defined so they could be recognised, and undefined so they could produce an unstable, emotional and ephemeral effect. It was tricky to think and paint with inverted luminance, since almost every scene would be inverted later in post.

The painted frames were then positioned by the punch holes and photographed inside a simple white box that turned the camera flash into an even ambient light. In post production, some curves, color and luminance modifiers and texture overlays were used to achieve this color palette and the final look. Around 1000 frames were painted and the whole process took 5 months.

I’d like to thank Alex Ostrowski and everyone at Lovers for their trust and support. The music here is the 2nd Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her", by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Animation Direction

Daniel Bruson

Creative Direction

Alex Ostrowski

Executive Production

Andrew Hunter

Animation, Painting and Compositing

Daniel Bruson

Assistance Animation

Erik Righetti

General Assistance

Talita Annunciato

Producer

Ally Carter

Writer

Alex Ostrowski

Creative Agency

Lovers www.lovers.co/

Sound Design

Daniel Pugsley www.cassinisound.com/

Client

NSPCC

Year

2015