Mayhem is a brand new animated independently made pilot episode with a fascinating backstory.
So!
Before I breaky-break down what Mayhem is all about, you can find a link below to watch
the animation.
Watch all the way through because there’s a post credits scene.
Of all the animations featured on Scribble Kibble, Mayhem is the only one created as
a gift.
Imagine directing a months long massive team-effort animation about your friend’s character
and keeping it a secret the whole time.
Haha!
Gosh that would be so hard to do.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened.
Paul, the creator of Sir Mayhem, had no idea this animation about his villain character
was being made at all.
Before the film went live director Magpie Blackford and the 30 or so artists involved
showed off lots of great animation... not a single bit of it featuring the actual main
character, Sir Mayhem.
Oh, to keep a big secret like that!
Paul’s wonderful art style inspires the entire film.
Commanding line art with lots of personality: broken bits here and there, dots, jagged clothing
folds, single stroke hatching.
It’s the type of style you look at and immediately recognize which artist it is, if you’ve
seen their work before.
And wow, Mayhem NAILS the 80’s cartoon old school vibe - both in the visual style and
in the sound design.
It has that granular texture of an old cartoon.
Decades ago, this style happened because animation was done physically on what we call cels.
Animators inked line art onto a transparency, then flipped it over and painted on the back
with color.
That’s a cel.
Backgrounds were painted separate, so if you collect animation cels you know it’s more
expensive to get a full piece because for any set of frames there’s only one background.
If you want an in-depth tutorial on cels I’ve linked a fantastic video on the whole process,
and a second video on the rostrum cameras used to photograph each animation frame.
Mayhem doesn’t use cels but it does have real, hand-painted backgrounds.
Look at how beautiful these are.
Look at them.
There are many different techniques and tools to make painted backgrounds, especially when
it comes to lined versus lineless.
Magpie did these with gouache paint - which is like a more opaque watercolor paint.
You can see it still lets the line art show through.
Those lines are then emphasized with black or white later, or allowed disappear into
the background under raw paint.
Some digital touch up for glows and color correction.
Other painting techniques in Mayhem include an airbrush for gradient shading on elements
like these wall stripes.
Yeah.
That clean shading is not digital.
It’s by hand.
Stencils cut with a scalpel prevent airbrush paint from overspraying.
To get clean edges in other places Magpie used post-it tag paper, sticky enough to stay
but not so strong it tears off the paint like tape would.
The animation itself is digital, done in Toon Boom.
What makes it look so retro?
Lighting and effects.
Take those two elements and you can transform too-perfect flat into gritty, satisfying feelings.
Can we take a second to appreciate this explosion?
Gosh 2D effects animation makes me happy.
And it’s not an animation without cameos.
Best place to look for those in any animation is the crowd shots.
I know you.
I see what you did there.
Right.
So.
We have Mayhem, a film featuring Paul’s art style.
How do all these animators with different backgrounds and skillsets draw the same characters
with the same look and feel?
Ah~ style guides.
These are what artists working on a team use so that style stays consistent.
Everything from character sheets, scale charts, color palettes, to brush size.
If you enjoyed Mayhem, follow Paul and the project social media for more episodes.
I’ve already seen a lyric video for a theme song and some other future bits to look forward
to.
All of that stuff is in the description, including the Sir Mayhem Patreon.
There will be a theater screening of the film with merch and goodie giveaways.
Follow the Villains_Co Twitter for updates.
Thank you Magpie for supporting this Scribble Kibble episode, my personal best wishes to
Paul and I hope for more Sir Mayhem!