When I joined this project, Reckitt already had a script. My first task was to pitch a concept and aesthetic for the animation. Immediately, my thoughts went to the look and feel of the film noir genre as a perfect medium to evoke the shady world of bribery and corruption. I adore the detective stories of Raymond Chandler and films like Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and Polanski's Chinatown, so I felt I already had a whole world in my head. I put together a mood board and proposed my ideas for an animation that used heavily textured illustrations and conjured the feel of classic film noir with all of its wonderful tropes. Thankfully, the client could sense my excitement and allowed me to run with this approach.
Here are the fully designed storyboards that were approved prior to animation.
