Aug 25, 2020

Exclusive Online Film Premiere: "Tales from the Multiverse" by Magnus Moller, Mette Tange & Peter Smith

Picture God as a stressed out software developer working from home. Sounds like a perfect description of working in the midst of a pandemic, but it's not: Tales from the Multiverse was produced before the "coronavirus" became part of our vocabulary.

Cartoon Brew's exclusive online premiere is rather a satire of creation myths and other religious beliefs. The six-minute short gleefully mashups prehistory, creation myths, and conspiracy theories as dinosaurs and cavemen, Adam and aliens clash. Watch it below:

The film was produced at Tumblehead, a studio based at the Dynamic Animation Campus in Viborg, Denmark. Like their previous works, such as the festival hit "Rob n' Ron" and the animated short about Martin Luther, "Tales from the Multiverse" uses CG to recreate a zany cartoon sensibility reminiscent of the Cartoon Modern era. Its references are classic, but its pipeline is modern. For the first time, Tumblehead has enlisted the global freelance platform Arterra to assemble the crew.

Why this style, what challenges it brings, and how Artella helped: ..... .Cartoon Brew asked these and other questions to the film's three directors, Magnus Moller, Mette Tange, and Peter Smith (who happen to run Tumblehead). What attracted you to this subject matter? I grew up in a religious environment and tried to fit in. As a teenager, I spent countless hours pondering the possibility that the scriptures could be true, but it wasn't until I entered the world of Tales from the Multiverse that I understood the implications. Since then, I have become interested in conspiracy theories. Not because I believed in conspiracy theories, but because of how powerful and fascinating they are. Like religion, conspiracy theories have the power of myth.

Like your other films, it has a cartoonish feel to it, reminiscent of the classic cartoons of the 1950s. Why do you like this style and what creative freedom does it give you that 2D animation does not? We've been doing it for years and are always exploring new things.

Peter Smith: I don't know if there is any creative freedom that 2D doesn't have, 3D just gives a different overall look. I like both, though.

What challenges does this kind of design and animation pose to CG-

Mette Tanguet: cheating is fun. Clear silhouettes and strong posing are the keywords in posing such a "flat" design. While this may seem simplistic, every pose must be designed strictly for the camera. Rotate," "scale," "translate," and "look good. A pose that looks great from one camera angle is unrecognizable from another.

The same goes for the animation process. Fortunately, this type of design lends itself to toony animation with quick movements, solid timing, and crisp spacing. This makes it possible to hide what one does not want people to see.

When we last spoke, you said, "With each new project, we always decide on an area of focus that we want to improve and reinvent ourselves."[25]

Moller: This pipeline was huge. We are used to working in-house, but for this film we tried a web page called Artella. We ended up with over 30 people from all over the world working on this film. It was a challenge to build a pipeline for it that would work on top of what we had already built.

Smith: I think if you can build a pipeline that works, you can do a lot of incredible things with people you wouldn't normally work with. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. We met a lot of really talented people and our network grew a lot. We posted a pitch video on Artella and talked a little bit about ourselves, our project, and what kind of artists we needed. Over the next few weeks, we were contacted by about 400 artists. We chose about 30 of them, and we are very happy with the results.

Moller: Besides that, we developed an "uber-rig" that can transform into all human characters, since there are more characters than usual in this film. I also used Houdini for the first time on this project. It was a steep learning curve, but once I got the hang of it, it proved to be a great help in assembling scenes and creating effects.

The film was supported by the Animation Workshop. Tell us about your connection to the school and your affiliation with the Viborg campus: We are all former students of the Animation Workshop, and we actually set up our studio right next to the school. Working here was a really good decision in many ways. We get to be part of the community that started it all as artists. We get to build relationships with students and a growing network of talented people. Our presence allows the students to see some of the directions they can choose in this business.

We are just one of about 30 small animation studios that set up store in the same building. Most of us have a history with animation workshops, which creates a common language and an urge to share knowledge and creativity. Put another way, there is little sense of competition. On the contrary, we often team up and help each other on projects.