John Lewis 'The Bear & The Hare' - The Making Of

Making of film directed by Jake & Josh

www.jakeandjosh.co.uk



The Bear & the Hare is the first John Lewis campaign to embrace the emotive power of animation, a filmic technique so evocative of Christmasses gone by.



Elliot and Yves took the two most traditional and time-honoured animation processes – stop-motion and traditional hand-drawn 2D animation – and combined them to create something innovative and unique. Their aim was to do almost everything in camera, using real lighting, lens and film craft to build a world where the audience can see and feel the painstaking work behind it. The 2D animation’s physical interaction with the set and the human imperfections inherent in the process create a hand-crafted piece full of heart and integrity.



The animation process involved constant shifts between 2D and 3D worlds. In order to achieve this complicated combination the whole film was first created in Blinkink Studios as a 3D previsualisation animatic with all the sets and characters built to scale. This allowed everything to be developed and planned alongside the modelmakers and animators, thus integrating the different disciplines and processes before the set was built or the characters were printed.



Aaron Blaise (Brother Bear, The Lion King, Mulan) and his team of veteran Disney animators at Premise Entertainment in Orlando, Florida, designed and animated the characters. The 2D-animation frames were printed onto mounted paper and cut with a laser. Each frame (nearly 4,000 in total) was then individually hand-labelled before going on set. Feature-film stop-frame animators then spent 6 weeks bringing the world to life.



The set was built by our production designer John Lee (Aliens, Fantastic Mr Fox, Frankenweenie) and his team at Shepperton Studios before being transported to Clapham Road Studios ready for the stop-motion shoot.



Post-production was done in-house in Blinkink’s animation studio, and the final grade was completed at MPC.



CREDITS



Directors:

Elliot Dear & Yves Geleyn



Executive Producers:

Bart Yates

Michael Feder



Producers:

Bart Yates

James Stevenson Bretton

Josephine Gallagher



Line Producer:

Kev Harwood



Production Manager:

Benjamin Lole



2D Animation:

Premise Entertainment LLC



2D Animation Supervisors:

Aaron Blaise

Dominic Carola



2D Line Producer:

Iris Pearson



2D Animators:

Erin Humiston

Darko Cesar



Head of Clean-up 2D Animation:

Janelle Bell-Martin



2D Clean-up Artists:

Mi Yul Lee

Teresa Quezada-Geer

Jacque Pierro

Chad Thompson

Jason Peltz



2D Compositor/Scene Setup:

Mac Masters



2D Artistic Coordinator:

Pam Darley



2D Digital Artist:

Anthony West

Enoc Castaneda



2D Lead Colourist/Coordinator:

James Lancett



2D Colourists:

Sean Weston

Joseph Sparkes

Frankie Swan

Harriet Gillian



Assistant 2D Colourist:

Lila Peuscet



2D Illustrator Technician:

Albert Sala



Printers:

The Graphical Tree



Laser Cutting:

Ewen Dickie



Designer/Typographer:

Robert Frank Hunter



Storyboard Artists:

Sav Akyuz

Steve Tappin

James Lancett

Robert Frank Hunter



3D Technical Director:

Patrick Hearn



3D Previsualisation Artist:

Simone Ghilardotti

Lucas Cuenca

Johannes Sambs



Lead Stop-Frame Animator:

Andy Biddle



Stop-Frame Animators:

Daniel Ojari

Daniel Gill



Production Designer/ Supervising Modeller:

John Lee



Art Department Modellers:

Colin Armitage

Sonya Yu

Maggie Haden

Collette Pidgeon

Yossel Simpson Little

Richard Blakey

Gary Welch

Christy Matta

Lucy Begent



Scenic Painters:

Fiona Stewart

Beth Quinton



Rigging Department:

Richard Blakey



Art Department Assistants:

Morgan Faverty

Anna Ginsburg

Jennifer Newman



MOCO/Camera Assistant:

Max Halstead



Director of Photography:

Toby Howell



Gaffer:

Aldo Camilleri



Runner:

Robert Gould



Post Production:

Blinkink Studios



Post Production/Compositing:

Alasdair Brotherston

Ian Sargent

Carlos Diego

Jonathan Gallagher

Elliot Dear



Editors:

Sam Sneade at Speade

Ellie Johnson at Speade



Music Consultants:

Leland Music



Sound Design:

Sam Robson at Factory Studios



Colourist:

Jean-Clement Soret at MPC



‘Making of’ Film:

Jake Hopwell & Josh Hine



Studio Manager:

Elizabeth Day



Studio Assistant:

Toby Goodyear



Catering:

Laura Barbi



Advertising Agency:

Adam & Eve DDB



Executive Creative Director:

Ben Priest



Creative Directors:

Aidan McClure Laurent Simon



Agency Producer:

Anthony Falco



Assistant Producer:

Catherine Cullen