Into the Forest

A Secret World of Animated & Lively Insects Coming Alive in the Woods

Inspired by a trip into the forests of Seoul, Korea, creative local studio, Studio Pivote, decided to take a trip into the islands of Jejudo to shoot the environment there.

‘Looking through footage, we imagined that it would be fun to see insects throw a party in their habitat,’ the guys at Studio Pivote told us. The result of this thought was Into the Forest, an irresistible cute animation of an insect party, set against a live action background of forest scenes.

Studio Pivote specialises in 2D artworks, video animations, and character production. We found out more about the making of this film:

The Plus: What are the main challenges of combining animation with live action shots?
Studio Pivote: Into the Forest has a lot of backgrounds that have different lighting and depths of fields. Thinking about the relationship between the light and shadow for each character was a huge challenge. Matching the depth of the live action backgrounds to the characters helped a lot to make the scenes look more natural. We ended up drawing in a glowing mushroom to the backgrounds, and added similar lighting to the characters to match the mushroom instead. That made the night scenes a lot more natural.

TP: How does Into the Forest show your studio’s creative style?
SP: This was a side project of ours. Unlike commercial work, we were able to do whatever we wanted. Trying to have full control over creativity for commercial work is never easy. Into the Forest was our way of taking a little break from that. That is why we decided to challenge ourselves with the hand drawn animation+live action medium.

TP: What are you currently working on?
SP: We’re currently working on an animated short with some of the characters that were in Into the Forest. By developing the character a bit more, we came up with a storyline that fits for a short. We’re also planning on some different projects to experiment and expand our style.

TP: Do you have a favourite insect?
SP: Not really. However, we had a lot of fun designing the ant and the stag beetle.