In addition to bringing together various media, Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee also captured a zeitgeist for its opener for the Ottawa International Animation Festival, bringing in themes from the cultural shifts brought about by the Russian Revolution, which changed the locus of artistic expression from the museum to the street.

The mandate from festival organizers was to create an animated piece to open the fest’s programs. The festival had created its own posters after the style of the Russian constructivist poster art of the 1920s, and Cuppa Coffee director Justin Stephenson extrapolated on that theme, carrying the style into the realm of movement.

While the constructivists applied elements closely linked to the worker, Stephenson drew on the elements close to the animator – cameras, computers, cels – to create a montage of cel animation, treated and keyed live action, computer-assisted 2D animation and typography.

‘I thought it was an interesting take on doing images for an animation festival in the sense that animation is such a technically intense moving-image process that animators have to be aware of time in 24-second increments,’ says Stephenson.

Stephenson created a number of panels for the basis of the piece and shot live-action, blue-screen images of simple movements like people turning heads, and blinking eyes.

Russian animator Helana Wolfe created animated cycles of simple, somewhat mechanical motions like walking, and turning cranks from different views. Stephenson combined and enhanced all the elements in After Effects.

Gear: Adobe After Effects was used to pull the package together. Adobe Illustrator was used for backgrounds and scans were added from Photoshop.

Artists: Stephenson directed the spot and Wolfe animated.