“Life is better when you share the ride.”
“June” is the story of a woman who becomes more connected to her community through ridesharing. Chromosphere was approached by Academy Award-winning director John Kahrs and Lyft to provide complete design and animation services for this project. We worked directly with John from the earliest concept designs through to the final frames, making sure that everything we did enhanced the story that he wanted to tell.
In the beginning we see only a small slice of the world around June in Chicago’s southside, but by the end we are taken on a whirlwind journey through all of Chicago’s diverse and colorful neighborhoods. For visualizing these environments we first tapped designer Théo Guignard whose rich color sensibilities brought out the beauty in every single place June visits.
One of our biggest challenges was to design, build, and rig June, our central character. She needed to be appealing and fit in with our graphic style, but also have the ability to exhibit subtle emotions. For her design, as well as all of the other characters in the film, we enlisted Tiffany Ford to capture her personality. Tiffany’s designs have an authentic and specific feel that is often hard to come by in mainstream animation.
To bring the characters to life we had to assemble a team of animators who could embrace the visual style of the short and also understand the subtlety of acting required to make the piece feel authentic. Leading this team was Nelson Boles, who lent his extremely sophisticated sensibilities to June’s movements and facial expressions.
The final product is a vibrant mix of 2D and 3D assembled by our skilled team of international compositors and animators. We’re incredibly proud to have been a part of this beautiful project. Check out our full production credits below:
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Kevin Dart
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
Myles Shioda
DESIGN
Théo Guignard
Arthur Chaumay
Tiffany Ford
Jasmin Lai
Emily Paik
Sylvia Liu
CG
Pedro Vergani
Feed Me Light: Felipe Hansen, Denis Bodart, Denis Bouyer, Richard Kazuo Maegaki
Mattias Bjurström
Theresa Latzko
ANIMATION
Nelson Boles
Claudio Salas
Alex Grigg
Jonathan Djob Nkondo
Bill Northcott
Vitaliy Strokous
LIGHTING & RENDERING
Camille Perrin
COMPOSITING
Stéphane Coëdel
Rob Ward
H. Kristen Campbell
Alasdair Brotherston
ADDITIONAL HELP FROM
Nate Funaro
Keiko Murayama
Rachel Chu
Jim Levasseur
