Stop-motion/CG-animated hybrid short written and directed by Ty Coyle and Bill Dorais is the follow-up to last year’s ‘Enjoy the Sweets.’
NEW YORK -- Say hello once again to Sunny and Steve, the charming characters brought to life by MPC NY in a light-hearted animated short written and directed under one roof by in-house talent Ty Coyle and Bill Dorais. The passion project continues as an ongoing creative platform to collaborate, experiment and develop talent within the MPC NY character design team.
The second episode, titled Sunny & Steve: Meet Sally, introduces our two charming characters to a new office employee, the polite and incredibly professional Sally. Love is in the air as Valentine's Day looms right around the corner, and the antics between Sunny, a purple bunny who has a habit of popping up in unexpected places, and Steve, the shy office worker, once again boils up into mischievous yet playful horseplay.
Meet Sally, like Enjoy the Sweets before it, is a blend of traditional stop-motion techniques and the latest animation technologies. It’s an homage to the classic art of storytelling, one that takes MPC’s skill at creating blockbuster visual effects and applies it to a decidedly smaller scale. Enjoy the Sweets was screened at a number of animation and short film festivals and was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick.
The MPC team embarked on this second endeavor to conceptualize and create a three-minute short that follows the 1970s-inspired characters after the Easter holiday and onwards into Valentine’s Day. This second film is slightly longer, includes an additional character and a set extension from the original environment.
“We wanted to expand the world of Sunny and Steve. By doing so, we could emphasize and highly contrast the personalities of our run-of-the-mill Steve with the picture-perfect employee, Sally,” says Coyle. “The opportunity to choreograph the humor between these two was limitless, so we ran with it.”
“Doing a story about an office crush gave us the opportunity to create Sally as a new character which was the highlight of creating our second film,” adds Dorais. “At MPC we have some incredible character designers, modelers and animators who all brought Sally to life through their own creativity, expertise and input. MPC is known for its character work, and creating these short films has been a great outlet to build upon this body of work and learn from each other in the process.”
Lead Concept Artist Emma Gilli describes the character and look development of introducing Sally as a new character: “We wanted to find a good match for Steve, almost like finding him a girlfriend. So everything he isn't; she is. He's fat and short and she's tall and skinny. He’s sort of bumbling and a little bit over the top, whereas she's very put together and neat and nice.”
“Everything from her nose to her buttoned up waistcoat was catered to fit her persona,” Gilli continues. “By keeping her outfit clean and pleasant -- socks matching, waistcoat buttoned up -- you can start to manipulate how you want her to be perceived. This allowed the writers to play off her looks and surprise everyone with her personality.”
Source: MPC
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
