How Riff Raff and Black Kite put a spring in Telstra's step

Can you walk us through the animation process?

Dan Moore, VFX Supervisor Black Kite Studios: The directors worked with their concept artist to establish the initial look, in sketch form, for each of the characters.  Collectively, we discussed how we imagined the characters would move. Then, we blocked out a few versions to see which option we felt fit the character best. From there, we refined the movements and added little moments to break the step cycles, making the movements feel more alive. 

Every character's walk had to be motivated by their physical limitations; hard materials meant the walk had to be more rigid. 

How important was the characters’ movement in creating the look you were after? 

Every character's walk had to be motivated by their physical limitations; hard materials meant the walk had to be more rigid. Also, each iteration of the animation always had the main character, Mick, walking alongside, so we could make sure we were keeping the movements in the same world. It was crucial that we understood how fast each character could move and that fed back to how we could introduce them into the film.

We loved the idea that as he experienced the wonderful sights of the world around him, his eyes were completely hidden behind his unruly fringe.

How did you get that swagger just right?

The walks all had to be recognisable as the 'Telstrut', but the designs of each character helped us identify idiosyncrasies in each character that added flavour to what always began as Mick's walk. 

Can you talk us through the character design and how you came up with such a fun selection of personalities? Do you have a favourite?

Riff Raff directors, Smith & Foulkes: Everything started with our hero, Mick. We gave his original design a smooth, languid style with elongated limbs and an effortlessly casual gait. When it came to designing a whole world of characters who occupy the same space, we applied the same logic. For many of them, particularly the more human, that was fairly easy. The same elongated body shapes and fluid movements were applied to all manner of people, animals, mythological creatures and strutting furniture. But some were impossible to translate, so we embraced the strangeness instead. You just can’t have a rangy garden gnome, so it was funny to make him struggle to keep up. 

We couldn’t avoid Mr. Pie’s eyes, so we gave him a slightly unhinged frozen expression. 

Then there was the Telstrut. We thought long and hard about characters that could strut like Mick. It was important to give each their own distinct personality… they’re not slavishly copying Mick, they’re just doing their own thing in their own very peculiar way. So if a scarecrow is Telstrutting, he’d feel like a ragdoll rather than a guy dressed as a scarecrow. We also messed with the rules occasionally, so the window cleaner is the only character to wonder what the hell is going on, even though his ladder is happily strutting along. And the delivery guy is the only one who constantly goes the wrong way.

There's an unsettling lack of eyeballs in this film, care to explain? 

We loved the idea that as he experienced the wonderful sights of the world around him, his eyes were completely hidden behind his unruly fringe. This was done to avoid him continually expressing wide-eyed amazement. He’s more chilled than that, he shows his emotions through his body movements and his whistling. Fringes, glasses and hats were used to cover eyes (luckily the skeleton already had empty eye sockets!). And we couldn’t avoid Mr. Pie’s eyes, so we gave him a slightly unhinged frozen expression. And of course the same rules don’t apply for aliens, so we were able to enjoy Craig’s wide eyed confusion.

We never miss a chance to put a hat on a hat on a hat, so we had to put in a few barely noticeable peculiar details.