Electric Studios Unveils Unique Animated Sushi Western 'Popo'

Across the water, her clothes billow in wind and fog. 

Poised at the ready she whistles for beastly prey. 

“Popo” (ESO#001) an Electric Studios Original is the first in a series of bespoke animations from Electric Studios: the creative studio nestled within Electric Theatre Collective. The starting point was simple, Electric designed the dreadful Kraken as concept art, then having fallen in love with the beast decided the team just had to build a story around it. The catch was no budget, so they knew that whatever they made would need to be produced smartly with agility and a focused vision.

Electric work with some of the best talent in the business, and with director / animator Chiara Sgatti, the team had the perfect collaborator for this flight of cephalopod fantasy. Very quickly Electric came up with the idea of an unexpected hero, her Ultra Cleaver providing the next beat of the story as they made her a sushi chef chasing the ultimate Tako. The rest all sort of fed into itself as Chiara concepted and boarded, the guiding light being ‘How can we make this as cheaply as possible without compromising on vision?’ 

The answer is a unique Sushi Western, its bleached aesthetic combining high-detail illustration with intensely sketched moments of movement. Electric cut its coat to its cloth, containing the process, reducing cel animation cost and using this sparsity of look to give things a fresh visual direction. King Lear crafted the perfect soundtrack to the visual mayhem! With a team formed from Electric’s in-house crew and trusted freelance collaborators it was a true labour of love that (in fairness) took a little longer than planned, but like the best Tako good things come to those who wait.

Chiara Sgatti, co-director & lead animator, “When it came to Character design for “Popo” I started thinking about her personality, why she does what she does, how long she's been doing it, and so on. So we landed on a very serious old grandma that has been doing this for her whole life, full of scars, very practical clothing, and an appropriately sized weapon to fight huge sea creatures.”

Geoff Parsons head of creative at Electric Studios, “Sometimes you just have to make the thing. The ingredients line up, the stars align, and that passion project which was lurking between imagination and reality makes the hard leap across the boundary into real life. “Popo” was that project. I think you can tell that everyone involved had a blast.”

“Popo” is the work of a team of artists who love what they do, and that love saturates every frame. ⚠️ Flashing Image Warning ⚠️