Sharpie X UNINTERRUPTED - More Than a Signature

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Sharpie and UNINTERRUPTED brought us on board for this series about the stories behind messages athletes write on their shoes. Supercut below:

Working with //kneeon studios I designed and illustrated a series of three animated interviews. We weave in and out of live action footage and animation, often mixing them together within the same scene. I developed an illustration style that is a rough (but refined!) Sharpie aesthetic.

THE ATHLETES!

The Memphis Grizzlies' Ja Morant explains the importance of family in his journey from being barely recruited to college to becoming the #2 pick in the 2019 NBA draft.

Newly retired Patriots superstar Rob Gronkowski goes into detail about why the best feeling in the world is being in charge of your own time.

Defying the odds, Bobby Wagner represented himself as his own agent, and became the highest-paid middle linebacker in the NFL

VISUAL THEMES

The client and agency gave us a ton of creative freedom to go crazy with the compositions, storytelling and flow of the piece.

I always love illustrating characters showing emotion, so portraying the athletes' childhood experiences was a great opportunity! Stories such as Ja watching his dad grill in awe, or Bobby getting bullied for being chubby and then lifting weights obsessively.

To keep the interviews dynamic we weaved back and forth between filmed footage and animation. The animation allows the viewer to experience imagined scenarios within the athlete's mind.

Even within a surreal illustrated world, I like to imagine the scene through a camera lens. A "wide lens" camera allows for the characters to be be simultaneously close and far away from the camera. A fish eye lens means I can squeeze even more details into the scene, like drunk dancers interfering with Gronk's meditation.

THE PROCESS

In the example below - we wanted to animate a scene showing kid Ja Morant shaking hands with a seemingly endless amount of adults.

Next example! Here we see how two styleframes came into existence. On the left: Ja and his family connected by a line. On the right: a geometric composition showing Ja holding his newborn. Scroll down to see how the two scenes blend together fluidly in animation!