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Sunday, 30 September 2007 | Levent OZLER
Shilo Does Some Serious Kidding Around in Cartoon Network Redesign
 CN Refresh.mov ( 23MB ) - Viewed 6033 times
Shilo's spellbinding new work attempts to address the age-old concern of children that "fall is just something that grown-ups invented." Taking that mantra to heart, the authors of We Make It Good recently completed a redesign for the Cartoon Network. With the Shilo directorial team shooting the live action and handling the design and animation, they took the color palette and overall essence from a child's conception of autumn and paired it with music from The Hives.
"Cartoon Network was interested in a new direction for their fall line-up," says Andre Stringer, Creative Director at Shilo. "They had seen some of our recent work, and wanted us to integrate live action and design in a unique way. They asked us to make reference to fall, and to animate to a Hives track. From there, they essentially gave us free reign."
Shilo's collective child-like enthusiasm for the project stems mainly from the multitude of talented children in the spot. Opening with a cartoon-like view of what could be New York's Central Park, two real-life kids sprint towards a pair of boxes bearing the letters of the Cartoon Network logo. A high-feedback guitar riff and pounding bass drum accompany them as they open the boxes and release a cornucopia of design delights. To lyrics lamenting the season "that grown-ups invented," a diverse group of kids execute astonishing dance and skateboard moves, while others rock out on instruments coming alive with elaborate cartoon elements. Though bathed in gentle greens, blues, and subtle reds, the spot nonetheless manages to be viscerally evocative as the live action kids interact directly with the fantastical elements.
"This spot is really all about the kids," says Evan Dennis, who led the Shilo creative team on the spot. "Their personalities and actions drive what amounts to a really cool music video. In the end, that energy and personality was our biggest inspiration and our toughest challenge. We had to consider how the kids would develop their own world. It was a rather stream-of-consciousness process, a kind of cerebral doodling, as we imagined bizarre rainbows, odd shapes, weird eyeballs, and more. We eventually came up with some lush, youthful drawings from which our animators were able to build toolkits."
With a distinctive combination of traditional cel, 2D, and 3D animation, together with hand-drawn imagery and 35 mm live-action, Shilo stayed true to their own preferred brand of "design-infused storytelling" even as they pushed into new creative areas.
"The mixing of media is very Shilo," admits Tracy Chandler, Executive Producer at Shilo. "We love working with a brighter color palette and creating a more playful tonality. Like all our work, this project came down to capturing the right tone; to digging deep to find an emotional guideline. The casting turned out to be crucial, because we needed so many kids doing so many challenging things."
For a particularly spectacular skateboarding stunt, the Shilo team reached to some old friends for help:
"We're all skateboarders here," says Stringer. "For those shots, we hit up our old friends and found some up-and-coming New York talent. It was amazing to see how talented young kids are these days. In the end, we formatted everything according to the client's needs and came up with a very energetic, youthful feel. We're very pleased with the results."
Authors of the recently-published, Shilo's daring band of artists, designers, and directors strives to push the boundaries of contemporary commercial production and strike a nerve in an ever-numbing audience. The company is distinguished by its passion for "design-infused storytelling."
Shilo directs emotive and groundbreaking visual experiences through its application of live-action, design, and animation all seamlessly combined with music and sound design. Creating an unmatched hybrid of storytelling and visual artistry, the Emmy Award-winning bicoastal company has the capacity and experience to originate ideas and handle all aspects of production - from concept through completion - with superior creativity and production excellence.
Shilo has studios in New York and Del Mar, California.
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