Think. Believe. Jump. Create.
Client: Sunset+Vine / Channel Four
London 2012 introduced us to ‘The Superhumans’, many of whom are now household names. We’ve selected six of our finest and have hand crafted beautiful expressions of their abilities, personalities and Paralympic glories through authentic Brazilian illustration and painstaking cel animation. Our sequence picks up our athletes from London 2012 and delivers them to Rio 2016 in an explosion of Brazilian energy and colour.
By animating directly on-top of footage from London 2012 we have been able to transport the athletes into a new word whilst retaining the visceral emotion which triggers such vivid memories of the incredible achievements in London.
Clyde Holcroft – Creative Director for Channel 4 Rio Paralympic Games
“For the Rio Paralympics titles, we wanted to focus on the athletes. Lee at Jump originally presented a brilliant concept that would require filming with some of the British Paralympians. We realised that their time is so tight and we would have to look to archive to achieve the idea. At every stage, Jump was able to deal with the many challenges thrown up whilst still staying true to their original concept. They did this with passion, patience, incredible skill and very hard work. The end result was stunning.”
Lee Jacobs – Senior Art Director at Jump:
“It was a very open brief. We were given a lot of creative freedom from Channel 4 and Sunset+Vine. We wanted to keep it true to the Paralympics being in Rio, so we employed a Brazilian artist named Gabriel Silvera to come up with an authentic look for us. Instantly it felt incredibly resilient. We had two great animators, Harriet Gillian and Sabine Volkert, who brought those illustrations to life and gave it the wow factor that we all expected from Rio.
Part of the idea was to take our athletes from London, and deliver them to Rio with colour and life, and tell a bit of their story. We were introduced to those athletes at London 2012 and in Rio we really saw them flourish.
When you are working with hand drawn animation you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do, so you can take footage from the past and really bring it into the present.”
Callum O’Reilly – Senior Designer at Jump:
“Working with Harriet & Sabine was amazing. Everything they hand-animated was a joy to composite into After Effects. Because hand animating each scene took a very long time, we were quite tight on time, so I was given the task to create the hurricane scenes based on the artwork by Gabriel. We were quite far along at this point, so I had to match the hand-drawn animators’ style using a mix of Illustrator & Cinema 4D, a very vector-based software. So that was challenging and fun!”
Sabine Volkert – Animator:
“I remember that Ellie was initially boarded with a dolphin tail, but that idea got scrapped mid-production and we had to come up really fast with an alternative. So the abstract water sequence was an impromptu solution that worked out really well though in the end.”
Harriet Gillian – Animator:
“My main memory will always be looking over at Sabine, head down, hair over her face and sparks flying from her wacom! Ha”
The sequence won a BAFTA Award for best titles and graphics identity in 2017.
Watch the team being interviewed by Alice Levine after picking up the trophy.
LJ – “What quickly gets forgotten in the glow of a big win is the sheer amount of hard work and extra hours that go into a job like this. Gifted with incredible concept artwork, the animation team were inspired to go the extra mile. As soon as Harriet and Sabine saw the quality of the illustrations, it almost became a requirement to honour Gabriel’s work in the way we brought it to life. For example, there would have been countless ways to animate the many hundreds of feathers that appear behind Jonny Peacock, but Sabine knew the very best way to do it was to create each feather individually, which is what she did. It is this attention to detail and dedication to the art of animation that makes this sequence what it is.”
The Rio Paralympics 2016 was a Sunset+Vine production for Channel 4.