In the 15th edition of the International Animation festival Golden Kuker –Sofia, 2024, Fernando Ferreira Garróz won in the category of Short film for children with his film Afternoons in Escarafuncha (2022), which he wrote and directed. Fernando kindly agreed to share some insights on cinema and production practices in animation.
- Fernando, how did you get involved in animation?
I have always been interested in animation, from a very young age: comic books, illustrated books, and animation. I have always liked drawing and stories told through drawings. However, I only became directly involved in the production of animation in 2012. Until then, I had dedicated myself to the academic field of visual communication, more specifically in the field of graphic design. It was the closest I had been to animation, albeit very indirectly. When I went to university, Brazil was experiencing one of its worst moments in the audiovisual sector, and working with animation was practically unfeasible, with expensive materials and difficult access to technical information – it was still the era of animation on acetates. So I went into graphic design, into the field of research in this area, and then into working as a university professor. Then, in the mid-2000s, the national situation began to change, with access to animation software and the emergence of public policies that stimulated the audiovisual sector, thus favoring the production of animation in the country. It was at this point that the idea and a first draft of the script for Afternoons at Escarafuncha came about. At that time, I saw myself more as the creator of the script, the character designer, and the art director, not so much as a director and producer. I thought more about presenting this to a studio that would develop the production as a partner. Later, I realized that to make my ideas come true the way I wanted, I would have to produce and direct myself. Although the production of Afternoons at Escarafuncha only happened years later, it was the initial motivation for me to get directly involved with animation production and direction.
2. I’ve noticed an aesthetic variety in your films, for example, the animation for the campaign #MascaraSalva reminds me of rubber hose animations from the 1930s. How do you make the aesthetic choice for each project?
The choice is always made based on the project’s communicational intentions. In commercial projects, this aesthetic choice is often already defined by the client. In the case of the project you mentioned, the advertising agency that was producing the campaign asked us to create a vintage cartoon segment with variety show singers that would be reminiscent of the singing sisters from Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville. So we went to the same aesthetic source that inspired Chomet: the Fleischer brothers’ cartoons from the 1930s. That’s how the rubber hose animation style was used. In personal projects where I’m the character designer, I usually opt for a more cartoonish style, which is the type of drawing that I do and what I am most familiar with. But even so, if necessary for the narrative, I sometimes make concessions, even on a personal project. For example, when I directed and produced The Bell of Montebello, based on a short story by R. F. Lucchetti, I opted for an aesthetic that was completely different from my own, inspired by mid-century Soviet movie posters, with their saturated colors and stylized realism. I thought that this visual reference would give the atmosphere I wanted to create for Lucchetti’s tale, a well-known pulp fiction author in the horror genre in Brazil.
3. What is your production process as an independent animation studio? Do you have a resident team or do you work with freelance artists?
The studio has always consisted of a small group of freelance artists who initially came together as a team motivated by the desire to work in animation. We all met at the university where I worked. The idea of Afternoons at Escarafuncha was an inspirational project that everyone was interested in making happen. But since it was an ambitious project – initially planned to be a 30-minute pilot film – and we were all beginners and self-taught in animation, we started to prepare ourselves by doing other smaller works, one-minute shorts, exploring direction, timing, design, and character animation. As we gained more confidence, we started to promote our animations as the work of a studio and thus began to receive offers for commercial work, develop some small, more ambitious authorial works, and also work on animation projects from other studios. Afternoons at Escarafuncha ended up being a side project, which only really came to fruition when I obtained resources through governmental funding. The result of our common efforts was that today we have all become animation professionals who now work independently, participating in projects together or with other teams.
4. Would you share some insights on making Afternoons at Escarafuncha? How did you come up with the idea for the script and the decision to make it in the aesthetic of the beloved cartoons of UPA of Hanna-Barbera all the way through Cartoon Network’s tv shows in the 1990s?
I have always been very curious since I was a child. I liked to learn, discover, and get to know new things, especially things related to art and culture. I liked talking to older people, I was interested in old objects, I liked collecting things and going to libraries, bookstores, and also places that sold used and old books and comic books, which in Brazil we call sebos. In the context of the period I mentioned in the first question when film and animation production began to be stimulated in the country, I started to think about a proposal for an animated children’s series. Influenced in a way by the premise of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends by Craig McCracken – a boy who spends part of the day in a special place – I thought of something in a context that would be more familiar to me. That’s how the idea for Afternoons at Escarafuncha was born, about a boy who spends his afternoons in an old uncle’s store, Escarafuncha, a place that is a mix of a bookstore and an antique or curiosity shop. Escarafuncha is a word that comes from the Portuguese (the language spoken in Brazil) verb escarafunchar, which means to search, to rummage curiously in search of something, to investigate insistently. As for the aesthetic choice, I always wanted the aesthetic of the mid-century cartoons, or the “cartoon modern” style – those cartoons visually influenced by modern art and with a stylized animation. It was a choice of personal preference, but this vintage aesthetic also made sense for the proposal of Afternoons at Escarafuncha. And yes, the UPA theatrical cartoons and early Hanna-Barbera TV shows were the main references. Those cartoons have always fascinated me. They are visually witty and have a genuine charm and innocence that appeals to both children and adults. I wanted to bring that to Afternoons at Escarafuncha.
5. Big studios are now making films predominantly with 3D technology. Therefore, through movies theatres, the audience has access mainly to 3D animated films. What in your experience, are the alternative ways for the audience to watch animations made with other techniques? Is it through online distribution, festivals, etc.?
Speaking of 2D animation, it is interesting to note that this technique is still going strong and I believe it is even predominant in series made for TV and streaming channels. So, for me, it is intriguing and difficult to understand why this technique has lost its prestige in cinemas. I recently saw a post by the great director and animator Uli Meyer on social media talking about the difficulties he has been facing in getting his feature film Molesworth released in cinemas – he was told that 2D animations don’t sell. In addition to this problem, which I imagine is global, in Brazil, we also have to deal with the difficulty of releasing national films in cinemas – something that affects not only animated feature films (regardless of the technique used) but also our live-action films. Thus, festivals, streaming channels, or online distribution methods seem to be the only remaining alternatives. Since I have only been involved with short film productions so far, I will not be able to answer in-depth all the questions surrounding the distribution of feature films. For short films, the only way to reach the public is certainly through festivals and online screenings.
6. AI is here to stay and develop even further. What are your thoughts on the integration of AI into the creative process?
Animation, specifically 2D animation, is complex and time-consuming to create, and it was even more difficult and restricted in the days when animation was done on acetates and photographed on film. So, every technological advance has always been very welcome, as it has made this form of expression more accessible. Today, I can only work with animation, producing in Brazil, thanks to the technological development that has reached digital production. But I confess that AI represents a technological leap that scares me, as it seems to be moving towards a point where all creative steps will be resolved with a text input. I haven’t used AI yet, but I think that initially, it can be a good ally in speeding up the production process, especially for tasks that are time-consuming and more tedious, such as coloring, adding, and animating shadows and effects.
7. Lastly, from where do you find inspiration? Is it through other works of art, cinema, or personal experiences?
When we work on a creative endeavor, we should be open to letting inspiration come from anywhere: from life and other works of art, whether from the same form of expression as the one we are working on or even from others. When I am in a creative process, my antennas are on alert to capture anything that can offer me a solution to what I am looking for, which could be the words that sound most appropriate and interesting for a dialogue or narration, the best aspect or pose for a character, a more effective gag, a more interesting composition, the most appealing visual. Solutions can come from many places: from the way our children play, from the mise-en-scené of a film, from the acting in a play, from words and phrases in a novel or poem, from the visual mood of a painting, and so on. Since I have a greater inclination towards visuality, I always looking for the work of illustrators, graphic designers, cartoonists, and painters, from any era. This helps me create a visual repertoire for solutions like the one I mentioned for the look of The Bell of Montebello. In the case of Afternoons at Escarafuncha, for example, at one point I found myself racking my brains to come up with the design for the spider Perpétua. While looking through a book about Paul Klee, I found a shape in one of his paintings that helped me arrive at the final design for the character. In the end, she doesn’t look like a Klee drawing, but the artist’s work took me to a formal possibility that I hadn’t yet attempted.
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