Alasdair + Jock Archives - Trunk | Animation Production Company
Trunk has created a series of beautiful teasers for the Financial Times.
On 20, Feb 2018 | In Press | By Pip
Alasdair + Jock like lunch, in fact they like all meals, it would appear food nourishes them. But it’s lunch that has taken centre stage the last few weeks due to a project for the Financial Times. At first our producer thought it was for an article about his magical budgeting skills. No. It was in fact much more wholesome a project; to make a set of teasers and illustrations for the acclaimed feature ‘Lunch with the FT’, an article that has been popularly carried for decades, and that features every major creative and business name you can think of. The relaxed, yet spirited interviews take place in a restaurant of the interviewee’s choice, and the bill is footed by the FT, who else? The order and receipt are then published for your deliberation, cogitation and digestion.
With an extensive archive of wonderfully candid lunches to exploit, the FT editorial team wanted to give them a fresh twist. Alasdair + Jock developed appetising little mysteries for each, revealing subtle clues through beautifully animated vignettes that reflect the humour, warmth and tangue of the interviews. With two new ones from Charlie Brooker, and Alma Deutscher, and two oldies from Jonathan Franzen (coming soon) and Nigel Farage, there was a nice mix of subject matter to call on. Chris Swaine and Marty O’Brien at Fonic created beautiful soundbeds for each, which really help contextualise the pieces, even using a snippet of Alma Deutscher’s piano work to help illustrate her story.
Producer Richard Barnett notes, “Large established media houses have a massive mine of data which remains essentially untapped. For example the Financial Times has articles stretching back over a 100 years. These teasers demonstrate how archives can be made relevant to the contemporary media conversation, whether interviews, opinion pieces, or historical articles, as history repeats itself, they often become more relevant with time. By creating visual introductions to published interviews a wider audience can be captured than could have been achieved by text alone.”
The interviews along with Jock’s wonderful illustrations were published in the FT Weekend edition, as well as online, and the teasers were successfully shared and re-tweeted on social media. The projects were created using a mixture of photoshop, flash and after effects.
Click below for press coverage :-
Credits:
Directed by Alasdair + Jock
Producer: Richard Barnett
Illustration: Jock Mooney
Animation: Alasdair Brotherston, Lesley Dart
Sound and Mix by Chris Swaine and Marty O’Brien @ Fonic
Commissioned by Natalie Whittle and Kevin Wilson @ Financial Times
Season’s greetings from everyone at Trunk! Hope you’re looking forward to the holidays!
On 16, Dec 2014 | In Press | By Richard
Once again it’s been a very busy year for us here, and thankfully an enjoyable one! Having produced projects for the likes of Coldplay, Lily Allen, and Rita Ora, for Canon, Coke, BBC 4 and the IMO, and not forgetting Rok Predin’s lovely new film “One of a Kind”, I think we’re all about ready for a break!
But…. we have one final film to show you, and it’s a good one!
Decca records approached Trunk on behalf of Classic FM to create a film for composer John Rutter’s ‘Angels’ Carol’, one of the most beautiful Christmas carols out there! Inspired, Rok Predin immediately got to work to create a short that captures the spirit of Christmas and the festive holidays, with driving snow, treacherous roads, and the warmth of strange woodland creatures! His resulting wintery film is based on the classic tale of getting home for Christmas, something we can all relate to as we struggle with trains, planes and automobiles at this time of year. The story is presented in Rok’s unique handwriting of rich textures, layered depth and a mix of peril and humour. With a nod to Studio Ghibli’s Totoro his uplifting short walks hand in hand with the magnificent building nature of the song!
Rendered in Cinema 4D and After Effects the work owes a lot to the methodology Rok perfected this last year creating his widely acclaimed short ‘One of a Kind’; as Rok states “The fast turnaround of the short would not have been possible without working on ‘One of a Kind’. It also bought back memories of working on ‘Winter Poem’ especially when it came to rendering snowflakes and thinking of the magic creatures contained in wintery woodlands”
Fonic, who collaborated on Trunks previous Christmas Vimeo Staff Pick ‘Thin White Gelato’, once again developed the audio for this year’s festive outing. They’ve had a busy year themselves working on Studio AKA’s new series ‘Hey Duggee’ which has its first ep airing on CBeebies on 16th Dec at 17.25, ‘Ruff Ruff, Tweet and Dave’ for Collingwood and Co which goes out next year, and ‘On Angel Wings’ for Illuminated Films which is on BBC1 on Christmas Eve no less!
So from all of us here, in a year which Trunk HQ moved onto the Thames, we hope you all have a really lovely break, and look forward to catching up in 2015 when we hope to be at it once again!
Trunk will be on holiday from the 22nd of December and will be back to work on the 5th of January. But the Facebook and Twitter feeds will be active; you never know what will appear.
If you want something to snuggle down to on Christmas Eve, then this might be it! Angel’s Carol features on John Rutter’s new album ‘The John Rutter Songbook’ presented by Classic FM, you can get it below should you wish!
The John Rutter Songbook
http://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Rutter-Songbook/dp/B00NUNQ0XU/?_encoding=&tag=classicfm0a-21
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-john-rutter-songbook/id926327151
Click below for press coverage:-
Credits: –
Director: Rok Predin
Producer: Richard Barnett
Animation: Ines Pagniez, Rok Predin
Audio Post: Marty O’Brien @ Fonic
Composer: John Rutter
Commissioner: Julian Forbes @ Decca on behalf of Classic FM
Tom Fun Orchestra | Earthworm Heart
On 04, Nov 2014 | In Press | By Pip
Trunk animation’s Alasdair + Jock have created another superb video for Tom Fun Orchestra.
The Canadian based Tom Fun Orchestra and Trunk’s Alasdair + Jock have built up a great working relationship. This produced two fantastic multi award-winning videos from the bands previous album You Will Land With A Thud. Their beautiful new video is for the band’s title track from their latest album Earthworm Heart.
Superbly dark with a wonderful streak of humour the video is a perfect accompaniment to the track. Jock’s beautiful illustrative approach has echoes of Wind in the Willows and Beatrix Potter, a smooth soft style that gently rolls and bubbles with a subdued and subtle line boil. The video was being worked on at the same time as Alasdair + Jock were creating their wonderfully received short Gelato Go Home! and the lyric video for Lilly Allen’s Air Balloon. In contrast to these works Earthworm Heart has a quiet palette and a more claustrophobic atmosphere. Alasdair notes, “ It was only natural that whilst we were working on a lot of bright and expansive work we wanted to create something that was a reaction to that.”
The idea for the short came from Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter, The Story Of The Wild Huntsman. Alasdair explains, “rather than the traditional reversal of fortunes story we wanted to create a narrative that was more complex and less clear cut as to who was the hero or villain.” The short’s narrative is certainly more cyclical in nature than Hoffmann’s original. Without giving anything away, the clouds parting to expose a murder of crows against a glowing red hunter’s moon is one of the most beautiful and revealing shots in the short.
The video was created using a variety of software including Photoshop, After Effects, Flash and Cinema 4D. It was the first time that Alasdair + Jock created an animation entirely within the computer. Learning to build digital brushes that created just the right kind of feel that they required was an arduous yet rewarding process. Indeed as Jock observed “ the experience and skills we learnt creating Earthworm Heart were invaluable when we created the animated album for Coldplay shortly after”.
The duo was also very lucky to be able to utilise the talents of a host of animators that filed through Trunk’s doors working on various jobs. When a job was being rendered or awaiting clearance these noble animators offered an hour here and there to help out. One of these was Fran Puerto Esteban who was on a sponsored internship through the Da Vinci program. He worked exclusively on the crow within the short, which enabled the character to retain a particular style and personality.
The video was greatly received by the band who had been most gracious in allowing Alasdair + Jock to use sound effects to alter their track when needed for the film’s narrative. The talented people at Fonic once again worked with Trunk to ensure this process was conducted with sensitivity and great skill. Already the video has been selected for the International Music Video Festival awards in Paris, so let’s hope like its predecessors it also becomes an award winner.
Click below for press coverage
Credits-
Directed by Alasdair Brotherston
Art Direction by Jock Mooney
Produced by Richard Barnett @ Trunk
Animation – Layla Atkinson, Alasdair Brotherston, Sam Cundall, Sasha Dale, Fran Puerto Esteban, Andy Hague, Aaron Lampert, Martin Oliver
Compositing – Alasdair Brotherston
Music – Tom Fun Orchestra
Record Company – Company House Records
Sound Editor – Chris Swaine @ Fonic
Audio Post Production – Barnaby Templer & Jake Roberts @ Fonic
Coldplay
On 05, Sep 2014 | In Press | By Pip
Trunk Animation creates Coldplay ‘Ghost Stories’ album stream. Last week saw Coldplay release a full 43 minute stream of their 6th studio album on iTunes, a week before it was released. The fans went wild. Richard Barnett at Trunk Animation was approached by commissioner Sam Seager at Parlophone with an image, and a question. The image turned out to be Coldplay’s beautiful new album cover designed by Mila Fürstová, and the question, can we bring the mesmerizing, highly detailed etching to life, without losing its look and character?! A plan was hatched, some tests carried out and rather than just creating a 10 second looping GIF, Trunk Directors Alasdair + Jock came up with the idea of an epic 43 minute long animated film that unfolds as the album is played. To begin with Mila’s Ghost Stories artwork had to be meticulously traced by hand, basically pixel by pixel, in order that Alasdair + Jock and their team at Trunk could work at the scale necessary, 7K, which is nearly 4 times HD! The new high-resolution image they created enabled tiny elements within Mila’s etching to be worked on in a lot more detail, allowing for tiny sections to be animated, and dynamic camera moves added. Jock noted, ‘the painstaking attention to detail in the re-drawing was essential in order to retain the aesthetic of Mila’s artwork, and allow new elements to be added and animated”. During this process sections of the image had to be re-imagined in order that when you moved one object or character, you weren’t then left with a hole in the background, so Jock had to learn Mila’s style of mark making. The film used a multitude of animated techniques, and a team of 10 animators and art workers using 3D, 2D cuts outs, and classical 2D hand drawn came together to create the astounding 50 individual sections. Each section had to be animated in such a way that they could be looped, ranging from 30 secs to an impressive 2 minutes, which of course just made everything that little bit harder! Once animated, each section then had to go through a heavy compositing and effects stage in order to pull all the different techniques together, and make sure the line style in the animation was exactly the same as that of the album artwork. To help build an overall visual narrative for the album, the team slowly revealed more and more detail as the tracks progress allowing the viewer to travel in and out of what is in essence a world within a world. The team also utilised time-lapse photography and SFX to create the world ‘outside’ the wings. Time lapse clouds, sea, and mist are mixed with affected art worked shooting stars and a waxing and waning moon which casts the wings into darkness as track 5 ‘Midnight’ progresses in the middle of the album. The amount of detail, the length, and the technical processes involved were so vast that Trunk had to bring in an extra bank of powerful computers, known as a render farm, to crunch the raw data. 53,000 unique frames had to be processed in such a way that the process wouldn’t grind to a halt, which meant that some 300,000 smaller pre-renders had to be made over 4 long and grueling days. (A special thanks to our fuse box for providing us with two lovely blow outs, wiping out 7 hours of work!) Al notes ‘It was a massive undertaking but we wanted to create something unique for the album, and we loved the idea of bringing this image to life with some really beautiful movement, in a way that matched the intricate and complex look of Mila’s artwork.’ Richard added ‘The finished project has to be up there in our top 5 along with the projections for Madness at the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Rok’s lyric vid for The Rolling Stones, our visuals for Keith Urban at the Country Music Awards, and of course Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano visuals!’ The final film was streamed on iTunes, May 12th at 9pm. And Coldplay’s 12 million fans took to Twitter immediately with a buzz of lovely comments and messages, they of course loved the album, and gushed at the animation, and as @Coldplay tweeted ‘Kudos and a thousand thank yous @trunkanimation for creating such a beautiful animation’, we instantly made hundreds of new friends! It has been short listed for a UK Music Video award. Click below for press coverage:-
Credits:-
Direction- Alasdair + Jock
Production Company Trunk Animation
Album artwork- Mila Fürstová
Artist- Coldplay
2D animation- Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, Zoe Matzko, Jeroen Jaspaert, Aaron Lampert, Valentina Delmiglio
3D animation- Layla Atkinson Artworking- John Harmer, Valentina Delmiglio, Jock Mooney Time lapse- Mo Hague
Compositing- Chris Sayer, Alasdair Brotherston
Line Producer- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Label Parlophone
Commissioner- Sam Seager/Parlophone
DataUpload- Chillibean
Lily Allen | Air Balloon
On 04, Sep 2014 | In Press | By Pip
Trunk’s amazing directors Alasdair + Jock have just finished a brilliant new Lyric video for Lily Allen.
The duo were commissioned by Sam Seager at Parlophone to create a lyric video for Lily Allen’s new song Air Balloon, the second single to be released from her as yet un-named third album.
The fun and lively video is in Alasdair + Jock’s distinctive and iconic style, and echoes their wonderful projection onto Buckingham Palace for Madness’s ‘It Must Be Love’, shown during the Queens Diamond Jubilee concert. The new video features a host of Alasdair + Jock’s trademark imagery along with their vibrant colour palette. The typography partially inspired by American neo-pop artist Jeff Koons is rendered in balloon writing, with sentences filling and deflating, and bursting with little puffs of smoke.
To reach the tight deadline the entire video was turned around in an amazing seven days, and it was certainly a full on affair for all involved, especially the directors who worked tirelessly. After creating lyric vids for both ‘The Rolling Stones’ and ‘Vampire Weekend’, this will be Trunk’s third foray into the genre. Producer and MD Richard Barnett notes, ‘As long as we’re into the track, and we have the creative freedom, then they can be great fun to make”. Whilst Jock Mooney added “Working to such an incredibly tight deadline certainly focused the creative process. We knew what we wanted to do was visually ambitious and nearly impossible in the time we had, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to create something that wasn’t as visually sleek and as impressive as we could possibly make”. With Alasdair adding that, “Even though it felt like the undersides of my eyelids were covered in sandpaper I’m glad we stuck to our guns. It’s always worth it in the end!
Click below for press coverage:-
Credits:-
Director: Alasdair+Jock
Producer: Richard Barnett
Illustrator: Jock Mooney
Animation: Layla Atkinson, Pedro Lino, Alasdair Brotherston, Leslie Dart
Commissioner: Sam Seager
Artist: Lily Allen
Record Co: Parlaphone
Prod Co: Trunk Animation
Thin White Gelato
On 02, Sep 2014 | In Press | By Pip
Thin white Gelato. David Bowie reminisces about childhood Christmases eating Mr Frosty and Knickerbocker glories as he introduces the animated short Gelato Go Home.
See the original, and one of the films biggest inspirations at thesnowman.com
Click below for press coverage:-
Christmas Credits:
Directed by Alasdair Brotherston & Jock Mooney
Producer: Richard Barnett
Voiceover Artist: Christopher Green
Sound Design & Mix: Marty O’Brien @ FONIC
Director of Photography: Andy Hague
Compositing: Alasdair Brotherston
Production Company: Trunk Animation
Original Credits:
Directed by Alasdair + Jock
Produced by Trunk Animation for Channel Four
Producer: Richard Barnett
Production Company: Trunk
3D Animation: Luca Paulli
2D Animation: Francisco Puerto Esteban, Layla Atkinson
Composer: James Orman
Sound Design & Mix: Barnaby Templer @ Fonic
New Look Animated Film
On 30, Jun 2014 | In news / blog | By Layla
Alasdair+Jock have been having a great, creative and very busy year so far. Here’s a lovely film they’ve recently made for the clothing brand New Look to explain the brand’s core values to it’s buyers.
Coldplay | Ghost Stories
On 22, May 2014 | In Alasdair + Jock, Director Page, directors, Music Promos, Visuals | By Richard
Credits:-
Direction- Alasdair + Jock
Production Company Trunk Animation
Album artwork- Mila Fürstová
Artist- Coldplay
2D animation- Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, Zoe Matzko, Jeroen Jaspaert, Aaron Lampert, Valentina Delmiglio
3D animation- Layla Atkinson
Artworking- John Harmer, Valentina Delmiglio, Jock Mooney
Time lapse- Mo Hague
Compositing- Chris Sayer, Alasdair Brotherston
Line Producer- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Label Parlophone
Commissioner- Sam Seager/Parlophone
Data Upload- Chillibean
Alasdair + Jock | Coldplay
On 22, May 2014 | In Features, news / blog, Press | By Richard
Trunk Animation creates Coldplay ‘Ghost Stories’ album stream.
Last week saw Coldplay release a full 43 minute stream of their 6th studio album on iTunes, a week before it was released. The fans went wild.
Richard Barnett at Trunk Animation was approached by commissioner Sam Seager at Parlophone with an image, and a question. The image turned out to be Coldplay’s beautiful new album cover designed by Mila Fürstová, and the question, can we bring the mesmerizing, highly detailed etching to life, without losing its look and character?!
A plan was hatched, some tests carried out and rather than just creating a 10 second looping GIF, Trunk Directors Alasdair + Jock came up with the idea of an epic 43 minute long animated film that unfolds as the album is played.
To begin with Mila’s Ghost Stories artwork had to be meticulously traced by hand, basically pixel by pixel, in order that Alasdair + Jock and their team at Trunk could work at the scale necessary, 7K, which is nearly 4 times HD! The new high-resolution image they created enabled tiny elements within Mila’s etching to be worked on in a lot more detail, allowing for tiny sections to be animated, and dynamic camera moves added. Jock noted, ‘the painstaking attention to detail in the re-drawing was essential in order to retain the aesthetic of Mila’s artwork, and allow new elements to be added and animated”.
During this process sections of the image had to be re-imagined in order that when you moved one object or character, you weren’t then left with a hole in the background, so Jock had to learn Mila’s style of mark making.
The film used a multitude of animated techniques, and a team of 10 animators and art workers using 3D, 2D cuts outs, and classical 2D hand drawn came together to create the astounding 50 individual sections. Each section had to be animated in such a way that they could be looped, ranging from 30 secs to an impressive 2 minutes, which of course just made everything that little bit harder! Once animated, each section then had to go through a heavy compositing and effects stage in order to pull all the different techniques together, and make sure the line style in the animation was exactly the same as that of the album artwork.
To help build an overall visual narrative for the album, the team slowly revealed more and more detail as the tracks progress allowing the viewer to travel in and out of what is in essence a world within a world. The team also utilised time-lapse photography and SFX to create the world ‘outside’ the wings. Time lapse clouds, sea, and mist are mixed with affected art worked shooting stars and a waxing and waning moon which casts the wings into darkness as track 5 ‘Midnight’ progresses in the middle of the album.
The amount of detail, the length, and the technical processes involved were so vast that Trunk had to bring in an extra bank of powerful computers, known as a render farm, to crunch the raw data. 53,000 unique frames had to be processed in such a way that the process wouldn’t grind to a halt, which meant that some 300,000 smaller pre-renders had to be made over 4 long and grueling days. (A special thanks to our fuse box for providing us with two lovely blow outs, wiping out 7 hours of work!)
Al notes ‘It was a massive undertaking but we wanted to create something unique for the album, and we loved the idea of bringing this image to life with some really beautiful movement, in a way that matched the intricate and complex look of Mila’s artwork.’ Richard added ‘The finished project has to be up there in our top 5 along with the projections for Madness at the Queens Diamond Jubilee, Rok’s lyric vid for The Rolling Stones, our visuals for Keith Urban at the Country Music Awards, and of course Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano visuals!’
The final film was streamed on iTunes, May 12th at 9pm. And Coldplay’s 12 million fans took to Twitter immediately with a buzz of lovely comments and messages, they of course loved the album, and gushed at the animation, and as @Coldplay tweeted ‘Kudos and a thousand thank yous @trunkanimation for creating such a beautiful animation’, we instantly made hundreds of new friends!
;
Credits:-
Direction- Alasdair + Jock
Production Company Trunk Animation
Album artwork- Mila Fürstová
Artist- Coldplay
2D animation- Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, Zoe Matzko, Jeroen Jaspaert, Aaron Lampert, Valentina Delmiglio
3D animation- Layla Atkinson
Artworking- John Harmer, Valentina Delmiglio, Jock Mooney
Time lapse- Mo Hague
Compositing- Chris Sayer, Alasdair Brotherston
Line Producer- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Label Parlophone
Commissioner- Sam Seager/Parlophone
Data Upload- Chillibean
Making Of
Director- Pedro Lino
Producer- Richard Barnett
Audio Mix- JM Finch @Fonic
