Siobhan Fenton and Clive Tonge, from the University’s School of Computing, were invited to a number of international film festivals after producing a scary nine-minute short film about Emily and a cannibalistic cantankerous old Baba Yaga two years ago. That storyline was based around an old Russian folk tale.
For Lynchpin Productions’ new feature, Miina and the Thief of Shadows, the two Teesside academics are working with executive producer Claire Jennings, one of the Oscar-winning people behind Wallace and Gromit’s Curse of the Were Rabbit, and Canadian animator, Vincent Marcone, who will oversee the visuals as Art Director.
The new film will follow the adventures of Miina, whose magical powers allow her to escape the clutches of a skin-crawling baddy who appear through cracks in the earth to steal shadows in a bid for world domination, explained Siobhan, the producer.
“The film will explore the magical qualities of our shadows and how they can be represented as a metaphysical dark side that keeps us in balance,” she said.
The new production should be out within two years. It will use a unique visual style setting it apart from traditional animated fantasy features as a result of director Clive Tonge's fascination with infrared photography.
“The textured 3-D world creates a surreal, weird world which combines infrared photography with digital colour photos of the same scene to create infrared animation,” explained Clive.
“We’ve been helped by some our graduates and several of the graduate businesses on campus, including Seed Animation and Real World Interactive. They have used their technical expertise to break down the colours to create the kind of image we are after. The best way to describe it is to take an oak tree. Instead of leaves it has got these glowing rose petals,” said Clive.
With financial support from the University’s Enterprise Fund and Northern Film & Media a 50-second trailer has been produced. This will be shown to possible financial backers at Cartoon Movie in Germany, the premier European animation forum in February.