Catcher from Different Brother on Vimeo.

Earlier than we seen Different Brother studios’ Catcher, we already knew it was all again lit layered vellum with a balsa wooden characters shot on a multiplane shooter. Nonetheless, we had been pleasantly stunned by the evocative impact these fundamentals created.

Right here, a world made up of layers of coloration are solely revealed by levels of sunshine that comes by means of them. Mild can be the topic of the piece, as a easy little determine runs by means of the colourful frames making an attempt to catch beating glow dots of sunshine that may solely be fireflies. The determine is opaque, in direct distinction to the filmy layers of its multi-hued environs. When it lastly nets one, this catcher turns into much less buoyant, extra melancholic, because it jars the little magnificence solely to observe its attractive colours fade to greys. The viewer is left with a way of actual, human-like, emotion, although the determine within the piece is made up of solely six fundamental shapes with no face in any respect. Bravo!

“With Catcher, we needed to reveal how a lot emotion and feeling might be packed into a really brief timeframe with a particularly minimal character,” director Isaiah Powers of Different Brother informed us, affirming what we had already appreciated in regards to the piece. “It was early spring after we started idea work, so we determined to attract from associated troupes for preliminary design components similar to gentle, saturated palettes, and full, pregnant curves. Then we kind of fell into the setting of meadows, forests and foothills and the abundance of recent life that exists there.”

Once we requested how he got here up with the storyline, Powers answered, “We thought it will be attention-grabbing to play with the thought of permitting issues we admire to comply with their pure course, as an alternative of making an attempt to own them for ourselves; for instance, when one leaves a flower be as an alternative of plucking it, or observes a butterfly as an alternative of capturing one. It was additionally a superb probability to animate expressive actions similar to working, leaping and dancing to create one thing heartfelt that emotionally connects with its viewers.”

By way of the method of growth for Catcher, Powers stated, “It was all about exploration and pushing our visible medium. Once we get an opportunity to work on brief movies we’re all the time desirous to study; stretching into new concepts to see what we will pull off. We additionally sought to check out our new residence constructed multi-plane shooter. It has built-in lighting and a again publicity all managed with Dragonframe so we will simply shoot black and white luma mattes for compositing as a secondary publicity.

“By way of the visible look and supplies, our preliminary thought with the character was to maintain him so simple as potential, and the physique design we arrived at reminded us of picket toy blocks. Balsa wooden appeared like a superb match, as it’s simple to form and has nice texture. At first we had been simply going to do digital matte work, however we ended up getting much more within the weeds. As a studio, we do lots of animated paper-craft which led us to marvel what working with vellum can be like.

“In all honesty, it’s a bit unwieldy, however we fell in love with the twilight feeling and texture we may get out of airbrushing and again lighting it. An moreover new studio function, a 3D resin printer, made for some simple prototyping and freedom of design for the online, the physique of the butterfly, and the jars and lids. After we spent a lot time deliberating over how precisely to construct and paint the wings for the butterfly one of many administrators occurred to take a shot of a freshly emerged cicada in his yard and the wing colours had been virtually equivalent to what we had created. Nature wins, each time.”