Preacher (Face Face + Angelville)

Once we nailed down early styleframes, our team shot reference for each character in New Orleans, while shooting for our Angelville Preacher spot. This would create a map of facial expressions and movements that our team could follow closely in post. After a round of edits, we began doing line work with a team of five Flash artists and illustrators.

With our team established, we fell right into the thick of animation, all done completely by hand, working our way up to a 12fps render of each illustration. All of our artists were given specific characters to animate, some of the tasks being delegated between line work and color work.

Our plan from the beginning was to make our transitions fit the narrative of each character’s storyline: for instance, “Grandma’s” goblet that she drinks souls out of, the fire that consumes “Cassidy”, “Jesse's" persistent cigarette smoking, and so forth. The transitions made the concept truly come alive, pointing to significant plot points, all while making the piece move in a fluid, distinguished manner.

Starting with a concept executed by designer and illustrator Carol Cai, we created individual portraits for each Preacher cast member. Overall, this spot brought us into new, exciting territory that produced an extraordinary final product. Thanks to our partners and collaborators at AMC for the opportunity to create something so special. We had a blast!

Our concept was to set the stage for all of the mayhem to come in season 3. Inspired by the compositions of David Lachapelle’s photography, we wanted to bring the cast together at the gates of Angelville in a similar way, pulling back slowly to reveal all of them seemingly unfazed by their apocalyptic surroundings.

The idea was to shoot each character individually on set. In preparation for the shoot, we storyboarded and illustrated character references, mapping out each cast member’s placement and actions. Then we flew off to New Orleans for a day's production to capture all of the characters locked off on green-screen with the exception of our main character, Jesse (“Preacher”).

For Jesse, we shot with an extended, pullback dolly move, which would end up as our final movement in post as well. This motion felt the most organic, as we matched and tracked that camera in 3D for the remaining locked off characters. The geometry for the fully CG background was built in 3ds Max and the final renders were created out of Octane, using C4D. We brought the fire effects in by using Phoenix FD.

After crafting all of the major VFX components, we worked final compositing and color correction in After Effects, and completed the sound design and mix with our partners over at Plush. Inspired by the compositions of David Lachapelle’s photography, we wanted to bring the cast together at the gates of Angelville in a similar way.

A huge thanks to our partners and collaborators over at AMC. We had a lot of fun with this process and look forward to more Preacher facetime soon.