The Case

The creators of Sentinel 6 completed a successful kickstarter campaign with their fans promising them to deliver a trailer to their story that's nothing less then epic.

That's where we came into play.

The Solution

We wanted to do a super-heroes action trailer forever, so when Asa and Pat approached us with the task we went immediately into "hold my beer" mode.
To accomplish this feat we needed a couple of things into play: vibrant characters designed specifically for animation. 3D graphics that could seemlessly blend with the hand-drawn characters and cool music.
Regardless of the limited resources we had, our "passion project" approach did made a difference.

The pre-production

Introducing 9 characters in a short teaser is no small feat, but we were up for the challenge. Our team had to showcase each character's unique abilities and personality, while retaining the intricate details and features that creators Asa and Pat already had in mind from their earlier sketches. We also had to stylize the characters in a way that would be suitable for a 2D frame-by-frame animation without sacrificing their visual appeal and set the stage for what promises to be an epic animation series.

Illustrator and animator creating characters and motion graphics for animated video project

Location design was key to deliver the high-end polished feel to the trailer so we turned to our super talented old-friends Boris Stoyanov and Miro Dimitrov to come up with some amazing art for the task.

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True to our DNA, the pre-production process had to be top-notch. We wanted to figure out everything in advance before jumping in the production.

We gathered a small but talented crew of animators who shared our passion for adult action animation to help us go through the meticulous shot design process.

Creator and director collaborating with a team to develop a storyboard for a video production

3D as 2D

When it came to animation production, we knew that we wanted to go for a 2D frame-by-frame style but we also wanted all the goodies that a 3D work environment could offer.

So, we chose to work with Blender and it's powerful Grease Pencil feature. This allowed us to experiment and refine our animation techniques quickly compose 2D and 3D assets in the same shot and put various effects and camera angles that would be nearly impossible otherwise.

We tackled the modeling, texturing, and rendering phases completely in-house and by experimenting with various shaders, we achieved a visually compelling style that complimented the 2D animation and blended both techniques at it's best.

Studio developing animation and video storytelling projects

Post-production

The post-production stage was where the real magic happened and everything came together. Using a blend of Blender and After Effects, we merged the 2D animation and backgrounds with the 3D assets and effects in the 3D environment. To add an extra layer of visuals, we used 2D fx and impact frames to really make the accents pop and bring all this to life.

The Results

Sentinel 6 - an afro-futuristic dystopian animation series tells the story of six warriors, chosen by Earth's ancient spiritual energy to defend the planet from its worst enemy - the last Zeronian.
Chase a Cloud teamed up with Sable Kudzu Entertainment to bring writers' Pat Stout and Asa Palmer story to life.

Producers:
Director:
Art Director:
Backgrounds:
Animators:

3D:
Voice:

Sable Kudzu Entertainment & Chase a Cloud
Alexandra Proynova
Sava Komitski
Boris Stoyanov/ Miroslav Dimitrov
Atanas Filipov/ Ivan Olczevizki
Tiago Miguel / Tsvetan Stankov
Alexander Nachev
Cedric Williams

Projects highlights

Food Detectives

When the pandemic hit the globe, Beecher's Foundation had to move their courses online. But they didn't want to stop there. We joined forces to forge a learning experience like no other, evolving around the epic spy action adventures led by the notorious food detective duo Chip & Dip.

Best Fiends

In 2020 we created the Best Fiends 16Bit adventure series of Seriously and their hit game Best Fiends. An 8 episode by 4 minutes each, the BF16 is a hilarious, nostalgic, entertainment YT show that send some of Best Fiends' most popular characters into a world of old arcade games from the late 90's

Video production team planning and coordinating a project

SiteGround

SiteGround is among the best and the biggest hosting companies in the world but video content had somewhat limited presence in their marketing portfolio due to the complexity of building and maintaining in-house video production resources.

Rescue Heroes

Mattel's Rescue Heroes’ legacy on the TV screen can be traced back to 1999. So to say revamping the series and relaunching the toys in 2019 was a challenge is quite an understatement.

Nat Geo

For a very first time, National Geographic decide to put personal stories in the highlights. They wanted to reach out to some of their most extraordinary explorers and promote their work in an attempt to inspire the next wave of local heroes.

Sentinel 6

The creators of Sentinel 6 completed a successful kickstarter campaign with their fans promising them to deliver a trailer to their story that's nothing less then epic. That's where we came into play.

Marko: Beyond Brave

Marko: Beyond Brave is a 2D side-scrolling adventure based in the Bulgarian folklore universe that instantly captured our hearts. When we got the opportunity to work on the in-game cinematics, we just couldn't say no!