Every idea starts somewhere, as some wise old soul once said. Oink! was an idea that was born from an abundance of other ideas. The inspiration for Oink! came to me the same way as Awake did, through the combination of boredom and imagination. I had recently seen Kubo and the Two Strings, which I have to highly recommend to lovers of animation, and it was on my mind a lot. Visually and narratively, the film was gripping and heartwarming, a feeling which stayed with me.
My mind came up with half a dozen ideas when my imagination clicked to the idea of making stop-motion films. This spawned Awake, Poof and the Big Blue Sky and Oink!, among many others which may or may not see the light of day.
A pig is often seen as an animal which isn’t as loved as cats and dogs (apart from micropigs, but I am not counting those). A pig is often an outsider, a food source, something that smells, doesn’t need much love and attention. Also setting a film on a farm seemed like a good idea, visually speaking. At this point I wanted a very visual story, something that relied less on dialogue and more on music. I wanted the actions of the characters to dictate the story. Soon enough I had a family in mind, a pig protagonist and a farm as a setting.
When imagining the story I saw it play out in a 2D style, almost like a Chinese puppet show. I watched the whole film unfold in my head, from beginning to end. The story of a lonely pig who wanted some love and attention. A simple story and a simple idea. But the idea didn’t feel right at the time to develop into my next project. Instead I became more focused on Awake.
I started pre-production on Awake without thinking too much about Oink! and it stayed that way for a long time. During the tail end of 2018 I hadn’t started production on Awake, but I wanted to get started on something as it had been a while by that point. So I dug into my notes from when I first started developing Awake and I came across my bevy of ideas. I picked two of them which weren’t as ambitious as Awake and which I could film in a limited amount of time and Oink! stood out the most as it was a very simple idea, and I already knew how the film would look.
Now we come to today, and Oink! is now available to watch on Youtube. It’s been a weird journey from conception to finished product, but I am really proud of it and amazed at how faithful it looks from what I had imagined in my head. Now go and watch Kubo and the Two Strings and become inspired yourself!
Watch Oink!
You may also be interested in: A Look Into Stop-Motion
Thanks for reading!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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