Blokhedz

If the Hollywood establishment isn’t producing the kind of animation you want to see, it may be time to take matters into your own hands. Case in point: this work-in-progress trailer (below) for a locally produced“hip-hop meets anime” feature called Blokhedz. Production designer and VFX supervisor Joshua Geisler sent me some information on the project:

We are a small independent company in L.A. attempting to create this film with a limited budget. The film is based on a comic book mini-series of the same title, and follows roughly the same story line. Earlier this year we produced a short animation test / proof-of-concept piece using 2D character animation and 3D backgrounds. I am the background artist on the piece, and I supervised the compositing of the project. It’s a little rough around the edges, but we learned a lot from the process and we are feverishly working on our design pack to refine character construction and effects development.

I really like the graffitti-styled effects animation. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but its creators are passionate, ambitious and serious about making it work. Good luck to them.