Saves The World, Kiku
“As my cat’s mischievous secret life remained hidden, my imagination started filling in the blanks. I kept getting more and more interested in a possible fantastic life cats could be living outside of being tired and hungry all the time. The ideas kept on evolving and eventually the imaginary cat, now named Kiku (similar to my cat, whose name was Kuki), was living in a small apartment in South Korea. There actually is a reason why I made the setting in South Korea. I’m still not quite sure on how and why, but ever since I started working and posting my works online, my biggest audience has been from South Korea. Why? I really don’t know the answer, but I thought “SAVES THE WORLD, KIKU” would be cool way to thank them with.”
“Language was the most difficult thing I had to overcome. Right at the beginning of the project, I decided, that I was going to tell the story in Korean. While I thought I was doing an excellent job just by using Google Translate, I later found out, that the super quick translation I did kind of sucked. After releasing the project, I started getting messages from South Koreans straight away, telling me, that all the text was way off. So, I sent the original English text to a friend, Soo Ryu, who did the first draft of a proper translation, and later handed that over to a wonderful professional Korean voice over artist named Lia Park. Fun fact #2: The title for the short film actually came from my unsuccessful translation attempt of “Kiku saves the world” with Google Translate. Once I saw that the order of words changed somehow, I thought that “SAVES THE WORLD, KIKU” sounds/reads like a cheesy name for a cereal or an action figure. That suited the idea behind the short perfectly.”
“Probably every cute animal from a cartoon or a drawing that I’ve ever seen was subconsciously a reference and made it possible for me to reinterpret my cat into its orange cartoon form. Also, Mechas. And Disney. Children’s books. They were all the cornerstones for the idea of “SAVES THE WORLD, KIKU”.”
“The song used in the short film, “Get Going” by Headlights ( © Polyvinyl Record Co. ) was actually just something used as a reference for the final music in the credits, as I felt it captured the mood that I was going for perfectly. Once the work was done, I managed to get approval from the record company to use the actual track. Super awesome, as I can’t imagine the film with any other music.”
“I had a lot of help by using some 3d models from www.archive3d.net and www.turbosquid.com. Beyond that, the project was animated, rendered and composited in Fusion. About half of the shots were done using an orthographic camera, which was a fun experiment for me. I used my old setup, which was a i7 6700k, 64gb ram & a gtx 980TI. Nothing fancy. Everything picture-wise, was done by myself. Had a little help from Lia Park with the sound mixing.”
I’m “SAVES THE WORLD, KIKU’s” creator, but the most fun I had was during the style development phase. I tried to develop a style that would suit potential spin-offs – the idea was, if there was enough external interest to create multiple short animated films - each located in a different part of the world and with a new pet saving the day. Maybe I’ll revisit the idea one day. Should I?”