Animate! Why It Was Love At First Screening for Rafael Aflalo

Raf was born and raised in the sprawling cultural caldron of São Paulo, Brazil. With a degree in graphic design, he tried a little bit of everything in his early years. He’s done branding, directed music videos, been a partner in two tech startups, designed a four storey exhibition on the life of football’s great Pelé, and even had a skateboard shop. But he noticed the true thing in common in all those ventures was that he kept trying to fit animation into all.

In London since 2015, initially as a freelance animator jumping between agencies, he became a regular at Mummu Studio. After some courtship, Mummu finally popped the question (and he said yes!). He now directs animation for a range of the studio clients such as Square and Samsung, and every now and then produces fun bits for their social media.

LBB> How did you fall in love with animation?

Raf> I was around the first year of graduation—I was studying graphic design. I bought tickets to a screening of Animamundi, an important animation festival in Brazil. I left the first screening straight to the box office to buy another ticket. Soon, I had bought tickets for back to back screenings over the following weekend (I’m talking eight to ten screenings a day!). It was the first time I saw animation as more than TV entertainment. It was love at first screening.

LBB> Tell us about the animation project that kick started your career?

Raf> After dabbling with a dubious copy of After Effects for a few months and learning what I could from the internet, I approached friends in bands in the São Paulo indie scene to make them music videos. One of them was the 'Garotas Suecas'. Me and a partner came up with this crazy visual concept that involved A LOT of rotoscoping.

I wrote a Photoshop script to do half the work for us and off we went to shoot over two nights in a party venue someone's mum worked at, that had a long enough white wall for us to use as a studio. The total budget was the four pizzas we ordered, all the equipment was borrowed from (irresponsible) people. Many many rotoscoping nights later the video was blasting nonstop on MTV. It all culminated in the band winning an MTV award that year!

LBB> How would you describe your art style and what are your biggest inspirations that developed it?

Raf> My passion really lies in the two extreme corners of technology. Both the extreme high tech and the extreme low tech fascinate me, or the combination of both. It's not where everyone else really is, so it feels like the expectations are not set. On those fringes is where I feel most comfortable.

In my early professional years, Michel Gondry was God on Earth to me. He would treat film as animation and animation as film. Still blows me away. I’ve watched, 'The Work of Director' boxset more times than my DVD player could handle.

I didn’t have formal training until I was working with animation for about ten years. So hand drawing keyframes didn’t come naturally to me. Looking back, you can see a slight pattern there, with lots of rotoscoping or similar tricks. Now, as an animation director at Mummu, I can finally leverage having skillful people lending their talent to projects I would never be able to achieve by myself.

LBB> From your perspective, what’s the key to animation that really lives?

Raf> Timing is everything. Fantastic filmmakers can do animation with two or three frames. Naturally, each style, each story (and each budget and audience) will require more or less refinement. What a Disney film proposes requires attention to detail and all 12 principles of animation in every frame. 'South Park' on the other hand has been delivering unpolished gems for nearly 30 years. And the magic is that if they swapped styles, neither would work. What they have in common is that timing is spot on on both.

LBB> Show us your favourite or most impactful project that you’ve worked on - tell us, what is it that makes it special and what were the memorable moments or challenges?

Raf> I hold my Masters final graduation project very dear to me. Instead of going for a traditional short film, I developed an animated graphic novel where every box would be an animated loop. As they scroll, the reader decides how quick the story progresses, in a way becoming the films' editor. The project was shortlisted for an important comic books award, which is something I wouldn’t ever have dreamt of. It is called 'A Space Tale' and can still be found online.

LBB> How does one figure out what kind of animation style or styles fits a particular story or project?

Raf> On self-led work we often start with a style and then decide what kind of story we want to tell. It’s a little reversed from what you’d expect the creative process to be, but these self imposed limitations inform early on the rules for that particular universe. Because animation accepts anything, setting the rules early helps the story to have a focus.

For commercial work at Mummu Studio, at the start of a project we all sit down, read the brief together and begin sharing our own references. Then we bring them together in a large moodboard and see which dots we can connect to better attend the client’s brief. It’s really a team thing, and when more than one person brings the same reference, we know we are on the right path.

LBB> What is your favourite piece of technology or software that you use and how does it help your creative process?

Raf> Because English is not my first language, sometimes I find it easier to get my ideas across through sketches. I don’t go anywhere without my iPad now. I find it incredible to be able to doodle things and share with the team on the go. I’ve been dabbling with Procreate Dreams recently and I’m finding it fantastic. We are not yet using it on our pipeline, but it’s becoming more frequent at the development phase.

LBB> What sort of briefs or projects do you find more personally satisfying to work on?

Raf> I always had a lot of fun with music videos, interpreting a song and turning it into visuals. I played in bands when I was younger, but that fell through at some point. Working closely with bands has been a way to fulfil this teenage dream and hang out with the cool kids. It’s quite unfortunate that the industry has sort of collapsed since. People don’t seem to have the attention span for five minute bits anymore.

On advertising, we at Mummu tend to have the most fun on briefs that come straight from the client. We get to come up with the creative concept from scratch and imprint our style.

LBB> Who is your animation hero and what is it about their work that inspires you? What example of their work particularly stands out?

Raf> It’s funny, I'm meant to say the name of any great animator doing amazing work these days, but the first name that crossed my mind was Chuck Jones’. There were loads of good people making those old school 'Looney Tunes' shorts, but you could always tell the ones directed by Chuck Jones. His minimalist approach to comedic timing is unmatched to this day.

LBB> Outside of the field of animation, what really inspires you?

Raf> I’ve been a comic book enthusiast since I could put two words together. I draw a lot of inspiration from graphic novels I bump into. Recently I got my hands into 'Swimming in Darkness' by Lucas Harari, which I had in my list for ages and I highly recommend. Also, being a parent to a toddler, I’m now discovering the amazing world of children’s books. There is incredible illustration and storytelling out there—children can spot lazy work. I often find myself browsing the childrens section with more enthusiasm than the adults.

LBB> What are the biggest changes to animation and challenges facing animators at the moment and what are your thoughts on them?

Raf> First, second and third biggest challenges are AI, AI and AI. I’m not at all opposed to the use of AI as a tool, let's get that out of the way. What bothers me is that what I currently see being released doesn’t feel as good as the work of an ace team of animators. But since the result is so quick and cheap, clients may be satisfied with lower quality work—pushing the quality standards of the whole industry down (I actually wrote an article going deeper on that recently).

The human filter will be crucial to prevent the market from being inundated with infinite inferior content. 

I am far more interested in the things AI can execute that we couldn’t before, not really the bits that replace animators. I think it was John Lasseter, former Pixar, who said early computer animation felt like paintings made by the people who make the brushes (or something in that vein). Only when artists came along that the whole thing took a leap forward. I can’t wait to see what artists do with this.

LBB> Any advice you would like to give to aspiring artists?

Raf> Uh, it’s a tough one. Learn early this is a business, like any other. So don’t be disheartened when you first arrive at a studio and you are not immediately working on their portfolio pieces. The majority of work in an animation studio is not portfolio material—but those often bank the more fulfilling endeavours.

And make sure you make enough time to create personal stuff with no real commercial output—be it a doodle on the iPad or a three second loop. Playtime is crucial to stimulate dormant neurons, and you’ll always remember why you got into this business in the first place. Also, keep an eye out for what other people are doing, what new tools are being released, it might just spark some ideas of your own.