The Precarious Work Monster was an idea presented to us by the team at AirCastle (working with the Toronto Public Library Union) to create a short animated video about the dangers of unsustainable and insecure jobs, framing it within a retro “horror movie trailer”-style narration.

The spectre of precarious work is one that pervades daily life in Toronto (and Canada in general) and while the animation itself is richly detailed and full of entertaining elements (based off of the style of old horror movie posters), the message behind it is an important one, and one that affects a number of industries in the city. We took the idea of a horror-film style blob monster, and created an animation that felt like a retro movie poster come to life.

We began by breaking down AirCastle’s script into individual shots that acted as single moments/posters that could come to life. We then storyboarded the entire script, panel by panel. We went through and annotated which parts of each panel would be separated into it’s own layer that would later be animated.

The storyboards were then translated into full color, richly detailed artwork by 2 extremely talented illustrators Leo & Dave. These high quality illutrations, separated into various layers, were then painstakingly animated with dynamic detail by a our team of 4 animators Alon, Jake, Gav & Scott.

CREDITS

Client: Toronto Public Library Union
Agency: AirCastle
Creative Director: Alon Isocianu
Animators: Alon Isocianu, Jacob Doforno, Scott Mulligan & Gav Patel
Executive Producer: Anna Junger
Producer: Alex Nursall
Illustrators: Leo Lingas & Dave Franciosa