If naked was the norm, would strip clubs be dress clubs?

Have you ever just sat and wondered, if the whole world was naked, if everyone you’ve ever met, if all your family members and friends all became unfamiliar with the concept of covering up - what would happen to all the clothes shops, launderettes, tailors and perhaps most interestingly - strip clubs.

Well. In the summer of 2018, myself and my creative compadres; Loveless and Wood did. And it all got a bit weird. Thanks to the lovely people at Stitch Editing, we were given the chance to create an animated short film around the theme ‘IF’ and with the help of Agile Films, we worked our bare arses off to get this finished for the Homespun Yarns short film competition and this is what we came up with!

It all started with this short, three panel comic, based on a passing comment that was made whilst having a beer. So when we were introduced to Homespun Yarn’s ‘IF’ competition, the pieces all started falling into place, where what started as a 3 panel comic could soon become something much bigger! It was this point onwards where I found myself in the interestingly awkward position spending each and every hour I had, drawing waggling willies, flappy fannies and bouncy boobies up until the award show itself 4 months later as I took on the insane mantle as the sole illustrator for this entire piece as well as co-directing!

We wanted to focus primarily on the simplicity of the concept, using a very bold illustrative style. Keeping detail super simple on each of the wide shots..

However, when we get up close to characters and action - we wanted to really dramatise and play with the seediness of the piece, most notably in the interior of the ‘Dress Club’ and the expressions of the guests within. We wanted to push the humour and absurdity of the film using a technique known as the ‘gross up’.

In order to enhance the aesthetic of the film and make our naked characters pop even more we proposed shooting real world static plates to animate our nudey characters onto. It’s a technique we’ve all seen before and it stands the test of time, who doesnt love Space Jam! We felt the blend of filmic reality and animation would allow the focus to predominately remain on the characters’ mannerisms, body language and happenings.

We went on to film a series of short tableaux style shots of locations for our characters to be introduced into. The real world scenes had minimal/natural movement in them but enough to help make the scene feel real (a newspaper flying in the wind, a tree blowing in the wind etc). However everything our characters interacted with, would be fully animated. It was at this point the real crunch came in, i’ve never drawn so many naked bods in my life!

After the plethora of nudey bodies were created and sent off to the animation team we took to composing a series of tracks for the piece with musician Malcom Goldie.

It was this point that all the pieces fell together just in time for the awards night! Sadly we did not win, however the response we gained was overwhelmingly positive and reward enough, we look forward to possibly revisiting this world once again some day. But for now, erm, I guess, enjoy…!?