My Animations - Pepe Le Moko Intro

Alright! After this long holidays (maybe my last) that are about to end, I've put myself together to update my blog, finally! Yes, they're about to end because I'm in the countdown for the most expected learning experience of my life! Well, if you're tuned you'll be hearing a lot from it in the next 18 months!

For this post I wanted to talk a little about my latest and last work for university, and the one that I'm most proud of, and yes, this one is completly finished. I've added a whole page for the process of creation of this animation, but it was all in Portuguese, because it was a follow up of an exhibition I had the pleasure to make with this animation. But still if you visit the tab "Exibição" there's some images to be looked at, scenario designs, character designs and lettering choices. Also there's a video with animation tests, the animation side by side with the animatic (in motion storyboard, sort of).

So this animation is a intro shot for the movie Pepe Le Moko (Link to IMDB), a movie about a gangster that is imprisoned in his own tries to scape from the police. He is a wanted criminal that lives in a labirinthic city where the police can't reach, but he wants much more to his life than just be a fugitive in that overcrowded city. So one day when he meets a beautiful woman from Paris, he can't stop thinking about his old days of liberty and running away with the woman.


For this animation I decided to use the wonderful style created by the Master animator Dudok de Wit in his beautiful animation called "The Aroma of Tea". With the style I tried to create a narrative told only with little balls moving around in a painted (with China Ink) claustrophobic city. In the whole intro shot there are 21 painted scenarios.

There were two main concerns to me in this short, first was how to have different characters when every single one of them are little balls. And the second, how to tell a story using only those circles. It was not my intention for the narrative to be completely understandable, there was much of an abstract feeling in it, but still the main drama was to be told and understood, and I hope that goal was achieved because it took me long hours to animate all those little balls and to make it mean something.

With this project I won a funding to make an exhibition with the animation and the artistic pieces created in the production. It was a huge honor to me and I hope I was able to pass along a little of my passion for animation.

Finally, I proudly present the title sequence for Pépé Le Moko.




I'll be posting in the next days other works that I made in my last year in university! See you soon!