Dare to be different

Overview

Morrow Pictures came to us with a single sentence: make conformity feel uncomfortable. We answered with a crowd of curious mechanical faces, printed like a punk flyer, and one small blue bird at the centre finding its own shape.

The whole film lives in two inks — cream and ink — so every frame works as a poster. No dialogue, just a marching-band drumline that falls apart the moment the bird finds its shape.

What the film entails

We designed a modular crowd system: twelve mechanical-character variants that can be duplicated into a crowd without ever repeating a silhouette. The blue bird was animated on twos for a hand-cut feel against the crowd's rigid loop.

• Concept, character design and print-style art direction
• Modular crowd rig with twelve swappable variants
• Hand-cut animation on twos for the blue bird
• Original drumline score and gritty sound design
• Poster-ready key art and festival cut-downs

How we made it

Boards first, always. We cut the story to the drum track before drawing a single final frame, then built the crowd as rubber stamps — literally. The texture team printed mechanical faces with ink pads and scanned them back in for the grain you see on screen.

Credits

• DirectionTweenwick Animation
• Art directionStudio in-house
• Animation2D department, six artists
• ScoreCommissioned drumline ensemble