Donaji: Process
The project was a team effort that combined the love of cut-out, stop motion animation & the Fantasy genre.
📒 To help us polish the script and styling we created an illustrated children’s story first.
📒 It was important for us to celebrate Mexico, its heritage, art and the innate power of imagination that flows in every Mexican street.
Images taken from the illustrated story.
Art Direction Evolution 🖌️
📒 The story is segmented in 4 fantastic worlds.
Our visual proposal revolves around making each one of them unique.
We researched the Aztec cosmogony to narrow names, colors, the characters’ personality traits as well as wardrobe.
Cat’s World - Tests
Technique: Pastel on canvas
This short film gave us the opportunity to experiment with different textures and materials that range from paper to dry flowers.
Cat’s World - Stills
Technique: Pastel on wood
World of Flowers - Sketches & Experimentation
World of Flowers - Final Result
📒We captured frame by frame with a DSLR and a diffused continuous light to keep our lighting as consistent as possible in order to help our post-production process.
It was truly a team effort, did I mentioned that our team consisted of only two highly motivated people?
📒We wanted to fully explore the process of producing a stop-motion, cut-out animation. We achieved great results that turned into festival nominations and awards.
The handmade process gave it a unique look and taught us that storytelling knows no limits.