The ZHEESHEE team presented their new animated short The Spark. It is the story of a young boxer and his ancestors. All of us face situations that seem absolutely hopeless at some point, and we all often have to find a spark to come out of it victorious.
Director Artem Shcherbakov shares his impressions of the project:
The Spark was a new and big challenge for us. We've been working on game cinematics and commercials with animation for several years, but making our own art project has always been our dream. This story allowed us to try out new styles in art, animation, and storytelling. Thanks to the project our team has grown stronger and many talented artists from all over the world have become part of it.
Case study
Art director of the project Maks Trofimov about working on concepts:
What I love most is creating quick, emotional sketches. Creating things that set the whole team on fire, that are a point of attraction for creative forces. The most incredible thing about this project was the sense of everyone's involvement and energy to be carefully transferred into the canvass. And because this project took longer than usual, it was very curious to see how the original idea changes shape, how it grows and becomes infused with each artist's strength and purity.
Animation
Anton Chistiakov, Lead Animator:
The absolute sharpness and vividness of the visual style of The Spark naturally led to the idea of realizing it in animation on twos. Into The Spider-Verse was the primary reference for inspiration and deep frame by frame exploration.
It was very cool that we ended up being able to realize what we had in mind, and the 2D effects, 2D animation inserts further enhanced the effect we were going for. But working on the twos brought with it a lot of technical challenges. Does it always have to be twos, or in fast-paced action sequences can we go for the classic 24 frames per second? Should the characters always copy their position relative to the camera in moments of repetition (as it turned out, this does not always lead to a better effect). What to do with clothing dynamics? Getting the animation pipeline right was the key to putting everything we had in mind into practice.
Check out case study - https://vimeo.com/766685646/0c47590de8
More Stills
Artem Shcherbakov is sure that a great future awaits the story The Spark. Now the ZHEESHEE team is discussing the possible development of the invented world in the form of a game or an animated series.
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