Think. Believe. Jump. Create.
Client: Vertical Social Club (Berlin)
Berlin based creative agency, the Vertical Social Club approached Jump to help tell the life story of Liverpool’s footballing genius, Sadio Mané. They wanted to animate key moments in Sadio’s life from his early days in Senegal to joining his first football club.
Peta Jenkin, the film’s director, told us “It’s an emotional story of his rise, pretty much ‘rags to riches’, to where he is today. Coming from a small village to football superstardom”.
Peta had a clear drawing style in mind, so Jump’s first mission was to storyboard the sequence and create style frames for each of the scenes.
These included moments such as Sadio practising football as a child, watching football with his family, to standing on a freezing cold pitch when he joined Southampton.
Inspired by African drawings, we developed a loose expressive drawing style featuring bold red, green and yellow colours from the Senegal flag, combined with our own textures inspired by African culture.
Most of the illustrations were initially created on an iPad using paint software. This was to give a realistic paint effect and allowed us to be more expressive enabling us to use our hands and fingers rather than being restricted by a mouse. Others were created in Photoshop using a range of artistic and charcoal brushes.
These drawings were then coloured and composited in After Effects where subtle movement, lighting and parallax effects were added.
Being predominantly hand drawn made this job a little time consuming to make, but hugely rewarding when the final sequences came together.
The film launched on 8th April 2020 on Rakuten TV and Canal+ and recieved a lot of coverage in the national press.
