This is a charming, colourful and engaging short film for children’s eco-fashion brand The Fableists.

The film, narrated by Jennifer Saunders, tells the story of a young girl, taken on a whimsical journey by the loose thread on her t-shirt in the quest to discover its origins.

The animated short is a one off, but is part of The Fableists’ wider concern to promote ethical clothing standards within the fashion industry.

Inspired by the illustrative and graphic style of The Fableists’ t-shirt designs, the directing team created an animation sequence using exaggerated angles, bold colours, distorted reality and tight cameras to create an epic fantasy journey full of energy and most importantly fun.

The team gathered as much inspirational material as possible, from character look and graphical compositions, to colour and texture. This was followed by a real hands on approach creating character designs, mood boards, style frames, storyboards and animatics, all contributing to the final look and feel.

The artists used a whole host of techniques to bring this project into fruition; style frames were drawn up in Photoshop, the character animation was drawn frame by frame in Flash, with other elements being completed in Cinema 4D before the whole piece was composited together in AFX and Premiere.

The big challenge was to hook every shot, creating a sense of fluidity and giving each scene it's own unique feel. Transporting a child to a fantastic world and mirroring this into the animation. Technically there were different approaches such as the use of flash, 2D and 3D, which needed to be combined seamlessly.