Mainframe has animated three virals to promote Tomas, a unique book written by Ministry of Sound co-founder, James Palumbo, which aggressively challenges the present financial turmoil’s moral corruption. The virals bring the book to life by animating its controversial illustrations and are being seeded across sites such as Kontraband and Daily Mash from 10th July 2009.  

Mainframe worked with Ministry of Sound’s brand innovation group, MSHK, to realise the virals. MSHK supplied single frame illustrations, crafted by Breed London’s Neal Murren, as reference. Mainframe then had to turn each still into a one-minute animation. Mark Warrington, Mainframe’s director and animator, addressed the challenge of turning one still into an on-the-move sequence by deconstructing each still into its component parts in order to create backgrounds and other elements that could be extended over a timeframe. Mark additionally created new backgrounds and elements, whilst staying true to the book’s original illustration style and narrative, to make the final scenes more dramatic. In total, the project required just under three months of After Effects work.

CREDITS:

Project: Tomas by James Palumbo

Client:  Ministry of Sound / MSHK

Launch Date: 10th July 2009

Illustrator: Neal Murren @ Breed London

Mainframe Producers: Adam Jenns, Emma Phillips

Mainframe Director: Mark Warrington

Sound Design: SNK Media (Seb Juviler, Kayvan Moghaddassi)