Toonocalypse was born out of Director, Owen Rixon and Producer Siggy Stone's admiration for Gareth Edwards' 2010 Monsters. The pair conceived the idea of creating a low budget 2D VFX for a short film piece after being impressed by Edwards' feature legnth achievement. 

 

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Toonocalypse was filmed over two days in 2014 and the story follows John (David Kaye) and Michael (Matt Martin) as two students living in Edinburgh documenting the arrival of a species of small, cute, cartoon aliens, known as "Toons". This was Rixon's live action directorial debut and being in Scotland mist and fog were a real challenge. Yes, even in June.

However things went to plan and the proposed shots were captured allowing post production to begin. The trick was to animate the Toons to reflect the amateur footage. Motion blur, camera shake and exposure shifts, unusually, had to be added to ground the Toons in our world otherwise they were too crisp and clean-cut.  The alien world still had to be extremely high detail and full of movement and colour. To achieve this we combined animated matte paintings with live action atmosphere and CG details such as particles and lens flares, creating a visually sumptuous environment

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Making the film was a huge challenge for The 2D Workshop but it was an exceptionally fun, gratifying and successful experience. We hope some of these stills allow you to explore the Toon's integration into society. 

 

 

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