Handsome Frank & Molly McMammon. Dining on a Cruise Animation

This summer-ish White Lotus vibe animation, based on a cruise experience illustration of the wonderful artist Molly McCammon, is our first collaboration with Handsome Frank and the artists they represent.

Animating this one felt like solving a riso-textured puzzle. We retraced lines by hand. We spent more than we imagined on those clicking glasses. From rough to clean-up and compositing, here’s how this beautiful work of Molly turned into a hot-gossip moment.

Collaboration

Agent: HANDSOME FRANK

Illustrator: HELEN MUSSELWHITE

Animation: VÂNǍ Animation Studio

Animation

It all started with one full-of-attitude sun-soaked image

The illustration is part of Molly's commissioned work for Virtuoso The Magazine, featured in an article discussing the dining experience on a Virgin cruise. We fell for it at first glance.

After reading the article, we thought Oh, wow! This looks like a cool place inhabited temporarily by a cool gang! You’d definitely want to be there.

The character design and the poses were so good, it already felt alive.
So we wanted to get that into animation, to explore the story of this afternoon on a cruise.

First animation tests with camera movement
Adèle, the lead animator on this, remembers that when we dived into the script, she pretended she was on board, watching some small scenes as her eyes would glide from one scene to the other.

How do you animate a riso-style?
Molly illustrates in a very nice way, using a sort of riso print technique made digitally: 3 monochrome layers of blue, orange, and yellow overlayed.

We knew it would be a technical challenge to stay true to this riso-inspired illustration, so we tested. A lot.

Our first instinct? Animate it exactly like she drew it.

We soon found out that would’ve meant 3 x the time, an avalanche of export layers, and probably a GPU meltdown.

After rounds of technique-testing (and coffee-fueled head-scratching), we found the sweet spot: animate flat, then work the magic in compositing.

It saved us hours — and maybe even the computer’s life.

Compositing the layers

We tested different approaches to be true to the design: working with the 3 layers, animating the line work simply in black, and then duplicating it and coloring it.

Eventually, Horia and Adèle found the best way by working directly with the right colors and adding a bunch of effects in After Effects during the post-production.

The storytelling came naturally for this piece of animation. We had this group of three long-time friends on this cruise. Funny, excited, and exciting, and teasing - in a playful and sometimes mischievous way. So we gave each a story and brought them together - a scene of intimacy they all inhabited for that moment.

We animated each character frame by frame in Animate CC and did the magic and the compositing in After Effects.

For the music, we went all-in on White Lotus vibes, as it was at the time of the release of a new season, and added a very nice twist to the animation. The sound design was made in-house, in Adobe Audition.