Labyrinth Reloaded

Welcome to Labyrinth Reloaded! Are you brave enough to face the challenges of the Labyrinth? Beware though, even if you find your way to the Labyrinth’s centre you will have to face the undefeated and deadly Minotaur!

Labyrinth Reloaded is a 2D animated short film produced at Escape Studios, London. Made by a small team of 3rd Year Degree Animation students. Directed by Sholto 'CJ' Rock, CJ wanted to take an existing story, a Greek Myth, and re-imagine it in a modern-day setting. Once he had written a script, and designed the characters, he made rough storyboard thumbnail sketches that were scanned in and cleaned up using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. From there, an Animatic was formed, and taken into Toom Boom Harmony for further development.

The Main Characters starting with Theseus, a young 20-something Greek male, who has more guts than sense. Secondly Minos, our charismatic and entertaining host. And lastly the Minotaur, a deadly robotic Beast that no man has been able to defeat.

The team used both 'paperless' frame-by-frame animation as well as cut-out animation for Minos, the Minotaur, and the close-up head shots of Theseus. Utilizing Harmony's advanced cut-out features allowed team members to work on shots without compromising on CJ's personal hand-drawn style, which also helped speed up production greatly.

At the start of the year, the team was relatively new to Toon Boom Harmony so this presented a perfect opportunity to learn new skills together while also stretching our creative filmmaking wings. The rigs were made by Steven Lall, who had previously worked with puppet rigs in Adobe Aftereffects but had to learn and grapple with Harmony's complex node network. Other FX such as the confetti was animated in Aftereffects. Below are some final stills from the film. 

Credits

Director: Shalto 'CJ' Rock

Producer: Wiktoria Swierk

Animators: Shalto 'CJ' Rock, Tyrese fletcher-Sharon, Steven Lall, Stevie Stedman

Music: Ben Salwey

Voice over: Shalto 'CJ' Rock

Editing and Sound: Steven Lall