Not To Scale Helps Headless Grow Their 'Strange Oaks'

Not To Scale Helps Headless Grow Their 'Strange Oaks'

Character design in animation is an essential element in connecting with audiences. Regardless of how good the movement and expressions are executed, if viewers aren't invested in the look of the cast and world it's pretty much impossible for filmmakers to captivate their attention and emotion. UK/US production company Not To Scale's directing team Headless know this and, with their recent mock-infomercial 'Strange Oaks', are more than willing to showcase their skills.

'Strange Oaks' is a curious short. Less narrative based than most of its ilk, the film actually has more in common with a calming daytime commercial. The twist – this commercial is targeted at witches looking for a new area to continue their dastardly deeds.

We caught up with the Headless trio to discuss how they started working together, the method behind their madness and the creative acorn that 'Strange Oaks' grew from.
 

How did you guys first meet?

We've been working as a threesome for many years. Adrian and I (Victor) we were directing our first feature film ('Nocturna') when Alfredo joined the creative team as a designer and storyboarder. Little by little he became the third director and from that moment on all that we´ve done has been as a team. Then we decided to make it official by creating Headless around five years ago.

How did you first become interested in animation?

It's quite clichéd, but we were all attracted to the comic-book and illustration world whilst growing up. Animation was appealing as well, but back then the amount of information was very limited (also there were literally no animation schools in Spain) so it never crossed our minds that animation could be a possible professional path. While we were studying at Fine Arts school we got in touch with the first 'Making Of' documentaries and 'Art Of' books that came out, and that blew our minds - showing us the amazing level of craft and art behind certain animated movies and also allowing us to learn little by little the technical aspects of animation.
 

Where did the concept for 'Strange Oaks' come from?

The Strange Oaks promo is something we did on spec just for the pleasure of developing our CGI skills. It´s supposed to be this fake commercial for witches, something a bit darker than we usually do.

Although the piece is something that we made for fun (also to promote the studio) there´s a story in that world, on which we're developing right now. The premise is simple: Strange Oaks is this little town where after many many years they´ve gotten used to protecting their kids every night from the attack of relentless witches, so much so that they are as annoying as simple mosquitos.

Obviously there´s much more than that, but it´s still in progress.

There´s something about witches that attracts us even though it´s a subject that has been explored many times in many ways… we believe we can find a way to refresh the genre.

Talk us through the process of developing a character or family of characters?

It always starts with the story - it doesn´t matter if it is a commercial, a feature film or a series, the first step is always to understand the world and the characters that you have to create. Basically we try to read and research as much as possible. If the project is not created by us we try to talk with the person who came up with it so that we get into his/her mind and intentions.

Once you know the tone of the piece and the personalities of the characters, it's then a matter of brainstorming to project ideas and to put our first reactions on paper. Usually we do that separately, so that each one can give a fresh vision. At that stage it doesn´t really matter what the quality of the drawing is like, it´s about ideas and trying to bring something fresh to the table.

Then we analyse the result, talk about the material and start narrowing down the possibilities, choosing the designs or ideas that feel more interesting or more in sync with the project. Most of the times we react the same way and we agree on the way to go.

From that point on the work is more organic and we tend to exchange material and work over each other's designs, polishing details and adding little finesses to the main designs. At the end probably all of us have touched and retouched all designs, that´s something that we don´t mind (thankfully there´s little ego involved) and it helps to create a more unified style.
 

Could you talk us through the design process of the central witch and her dinner (the children)?

I have to say that we have a very organic and carefree method when it comes to design. I know there´s a lot of people that have an 'intellectual' approach to design but in our case we go with our instincts when it comes to finding the look of things.

With this project we knew we wanted extreme shapes for the witch, treating her body almost like some sort of animal, like a fat T-rex, with a big body and thin short arms. We tried to find a design for an appealing monster, if that was possible. For the kids we just wanted them to contrast so it was a matter of making them tiny and cute... also to make them a bit 'generic' and without proper personality so that they felt like 'objects'.

Witches can be pretty spooky. How important was it to err on the right side of sinister?

When it comes to 'darkness' I really think it´s something we try to balance from project to project. It´s true that our first feature film (Nocturna) was basically about darkness, and that Strange Oaks is quite dark, but other than those, the rest of our work is quite colourful and jolly. I think we like to combine these two sides.

Anyway we always knew this piece was supposed to be fun, so we were pretty confident about not making it too gruesome or in bad taste. We wouldn´t have liked that ourselves.
 

With the creepy images on show, were you conscious that the spot needed a light-hearted voiceover and music track? How did you go about creating those?

Funny enough, those aspects came later on in the process. At first the spot was less light-hearted, but once we decided that we wanted to make some sort of 'mock infomercial' we knew we would have to play with the certain clichéd elements such as the cheesy music and the smooth voice over.

For the music, it was a matter of doing some good research and finding the right tune (we wanted one with children choirs… we thought it would give it a nice extra ironic layer). As for the VO – we worked with an actress used to doing these types of 'promotional' pieces.

How long does a film like 'Strange Oaks' take to make? What software do you use?

It´s difficult to say how long it took as this was a piece made on spec without a deadline. We worked on it in our free time and with the help of friends… so it took way longer than a normal commercial piece.

Strange Oaks was animated on Softimage XSI for no particular reason just because that was the software our animators used. Sadly when it comes to CG we have to adapt to what we have and do our best. We´re not a CG studio by definition, if anything we´re a traditional animation studio that is trying to be openminded and expand on CG. What I´m trying to say is we haven´t established (yet) a pipeline when it comes to CG.
 

What's the future for Headless?

We want to keep maintaining the balance between commissioned work and our own projects. We have millions of ideas that we want to develop and we want to keep enough time to do so. We are developing our first official short film and also moving around a couple of feature film projects.

At the same time we want to increase our commercial demo reel, get to show and prove that we can put some of our own magical universe into the commercial arena.


You can contact Kelly Ford at Not To Scale for more information about Headless - +44 (0) 207 734 4575

Posted on 2nd September 2013