What is the film about?

A new episode of the animated cult classic, Dog Judo, on Youtube. The episode highlights the absurdity of modern social media through ridiculous young influencer, Brooks Rokkit. He advises Roy and Rexley to forget judo in their social media and go for the ‘win’ in the first three seconds of any post. It mirrors the Dog & Rabbit team’s own situation – having recently brought the Dog Judo series back – how do we get the world to see it. It’s all about the algorithm apparently.

What influenced it?

Classic British comedy like The Young Ones. Early episodes back in the day featured characters voiced by Rick Mayall and Kathy Burke. The photo cut out animation style echoes classic Monty Python. So very much in the tradition of absurdist British.

A little background information...

Dog Judo is a great showcase for simple and hopefully funny sketch animation. And a shout out to promote other commercial work of the Dog and Rabbit animation studio.

How was the film made?

We photograph the dogs and the clothing and then chop them up in Photoshop and animate the layers in After Effects. The new Brooks Rokkit character is animated entirely inside After Effects. Bits of him are imported from Blender and Photoshop and he comes together nicely in the new Advanced 3D Render Engine. The shadows and usability get better with every new update. Photoshop and After Effects work so much better than they used to and help to radically reduce production times.