The concept and backgrounds are nice but the whole film seems like it lacks the concept of inbetweens.

I really really hope they do something about those lens-flares. I’d still watch this (and will if I get the chance), but the lens flares just kill the suspension of disbelief. You can’t have a completely graphic effect like that alongside such stylized characters. It won’t look right.

Looks nice, but I don’t think it’s hand drawn. It looks like it’s made with some vector program.

And vector points draw themselves?

I wish people wouldn’t throw around technical terms and mix them up with style decisions. Anybody with just a basic knowledge about animation should be able to tell the difference between design, animation, roughs, and cleanups, no matter which of those is done in which technique, analogue, digital, by hand or by algorithm. As old-fashioned I might be, I don’t think “hand-drawn” makes a film better, nowadays.

whoa, easy Tiger! One look at my profile would have given you an impression of my experience in vector animation. I was just pointing out to Jerry what he thought was hand drawn or ‘classical’ animation may in fact have been produced using Flash, Toon Boom or some other vector program.

And vector points draw themselves?
Great line!

As I’m watching the trailer, I’m thinking to myself, “Wow, this must be a new studio, their animators haven’t learned a few basic skills like perspective yet.” Then I see their home page, which says they’re six years old.

So, as easy as it would be to pick on the animation, I’ll keep it positive and say that it always makes me happy to see an animated movie being made for an adult audience (one with a serious story, not that Rob Zombie tripe).

It was actually an overstatement to say they haven’t learned perspective, but a few shots are wonky, some with respect to their backgrounds. Oops, criticism, shutting up now. I’ll be very interested to see how the South American audience responds to it when it’s out.

I dig the visual style and the story - but it could use some more in-betweening.

I feel like some of the animation is a bit stiff, but I can only judge so much from a preview where I don’t understand the dialogue and I would be curious to see out it turns out.

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like this film is taking some stylistic cues from Dreamworks’ “Prince of Egypt”?

Paul: I watched that trailer again and still see no sign of 3D-model-rendered-with-comic-shader or any other signs of procedural animation in the character’s movements. So this still counts as hand-drawn animation for me, no matter wether it was drawn on paper, in Flash, in Toonboom, or in TVPaint.

There are some shots which look like a face was moved as a whole, which gives the (sometimes dreaded) cutout look of “typical” Flash animation, but we all know this happens quite often in traditional animation and is a legitimate shortcut in inbetweening. Just that an element is rotated around the Z axis only doesn’t rule it out as hand-drawn.

That’s the animation. The other point is the design. Characters like these are drawn by hand, maybe on a Cintiq, maybe in Flash or Toonboom or Anime studio, but still by a human artist. Even if they were drawn on paper, then scanned, then vecorized - they were still hand-drawn.

I hate the flood of bad vector and procedural animation as much as the next animator, but “looks like vector” isn’t a really strong point.

Looks interesting. It reminds me of the movie City of God. I’d go see it.

And vector points draw themselves?

LOL I wish.

Great looking compositing, great backgrounds, awesome cinematography. The animation though, at points in the trailer, feels sophomoric. This is the trailer and it should feature only the best to sell the film. While I am sure they saved better parts for the film it also looks like there are a lot of cringe worthy animation scenes.

That said inbetweening while nice is sometimes not in the budget. Animation can still be good with limited inbetweening, for example the animation on the TV show Avatar is quite good even on 3s and 4s.

@ Paul O’Flanagan

Animation that is drawn is hand drawn classical, whether its on paper or on a Cintiq. If you use flash or after effects to puppet the animation then this is not hand drawn classical animation.

Not as well animated as Hanna and Barbera’s Johnny Quest……
They are Brazilian. Braziliansy have a tremendous culture of their own. Great writers, great artists, great musicians. Why do these guys want to create a product that LOOK American in the wost sense of the word?

Luckily Persepolis or Waltz With Bashir or Les Triplettes de Belville didn’t look like this.

adult skewing = guns and boobs and guns and dark lighting and guns?

This one doesn’t look ghastly either but I can’t be sure it’s real Brazilian content when no one has fruit on their head.

Sara, the aggressive angles in the character design actually reminded me of Disney’s Atlantis!

“This one doesn’t look ghastly either but I can’t be sure it’s real Brazilian content when no one has fruit on their head.

You’re joking here, right?

The 60’s were brutal in Brazil. They suffered a military dictatorship (that lasted 20 years) and the disappearance of students like in many other Latin American countries. Just because they chose to use a Marilyn Manson song instead of Samba doesn’t mean it’s not full of Brazilian content.

I’d definitely see this.

Oh yeah. Looks really “fun” and commercially viable.

Cool

The animation is problematic in spots, but I have a hunch that if someone did a 100 bullets toon, it might look a lot like this.
It’s promising in that at least the one woman in the clip gets to hold a weapon before taking her shirt off.

Unfortunately, long standing brutal military dictatorships and disappearances aren’t a uniquely Brazilian or even Latin American experience, hence my typical American confusion at identifying this trailer’s cultural origins without any fruit-wearing characters.

Thongs would have worked too.

Seriously… watching that trailer without any English translation it’s not apparent at all that it’s about a specific historical event in a specific place. The shots are all very generic anime-looking situations. But of course, I doubt English-speakers are their target audience.

I spoof the Brazilian content thing only because of a previous thread in which someone complained that a sci-fi epic wasn’t visibly “Brazilian” enough.

I kept expecting to see Slimer.

It is interesting because it is a full feature animated movie wich don’t focus on kids or a famous face (and have 2 good actors in the dubbing roles)

And if anyone is curious ..the narration goes something like that:
“Living without knowing your past is like walking in the dark

Our memories aren’t dates on a book, they are living stories, full of love .. and fury

How do i know that ? I’m alive for almost 600 years … i saw lots of things

I found Janaina again in the body of another woman

I saw lots of things … can i tell them?”

I have to fully agree with Oscar Grillo, but at the same time, although i’m brazilian i don’t expect all of our movies to have “brazilian content” that being what people like to call it “cultural values” or even “fruits in their head” (that hurt a lot man, don’t do it again please). I do hope people invest in their personal beliefs and go for what they really want, we don’t need to use anything cultural as some kind of crutches to support our entertainment products. and i do believe in the power of entertainment for itself, i don’t think we should strive for a “cult” market or be relegated to some shelf of “world animation”.
that being said, I’m really glad to see all these movies being produced here. but as far as the trailer goes… i congratulate everyone involved, but personally, i think the whole design is quite ugly.

And LUTAS means FIGHTS, referring to the different moments and difficulties Brazil has been though.

Gullane Filmes usually do great stuff.

reminds me a lot of Fox Channel’s City Hunters, made in Argentina, I first believed it was created by the same people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gysKsQLBE9w

The characters are Milo Manara’s designs and it’s was created for “promotion” of the Axe deodorants by Unilever. At least the naked ladies look the same.

Noticing the name of that show was “City Hunters”, I almost got confused with the familiar Japanese manga/anime series “City Hunter”, which is a completely different thing altogether but I like to point that out. :-)

Looks great. Always makes me feel fuzzy inside when I see an animated film made for a mature audience. Though I have to say I’m more excited about that previous French film…. Badir or something was it?

@Gio Renna

Are you talking about the Israeli animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir?

I really hope someone releases this to the American market.

The animation’s fairly limited (I too kept thinking, “Were there any ‘tweeners hired for this?) but the strong character design more than makes up for it. We really need to see work like this on our side of the shore, that’s why here’s hoping Lutas makes it over here in subtitled form.

That Brazilian studio Lightstar cannot be all that bad, since I saw its name among the credits of the very multinational (Ireland, France, Belgium, Brazil, Hungary) team of the superb Brendan and the Secret of Kells, just out in Blu-Ray over here in France. Wonderful quirky and stylised artwork, a real feast for the eyes.