Manchester Printworks: Printlings
From July 2022 to March 2024, I worked with Flipbook Studio to create content for Europe’s largest digital ceiling installed at the Manchester-based entertainment venue, Printworks. The ceiling consisted of three large unconventionally shaped screens and a 16:9 horizontal wall screen for supporting material. The extreme size and odd dimensions of the screens were an interesting problem to solve which resulted in a series of unique shows that played to the strengths of the format.​
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​I provided direction, animation, and character designs for a number of shows adhering to briefs provided by the client. The following is a breakdown of the work I provided for the Printlings projects. You can find breakdowns of my work on other Printworks shows here: Cloud Doodles, Pufferfish and Astronauts
The brief for this show was a lot more open-ended than the others. This project was for the launch of the digital ceilings and the client had specified that they wanted it to seem like something had malfunctioned. I began by sketching up a few ideas which were presented to the client.
They were fond of the goblin idea and the monster bursting through the screen so we combined these and used that as our basis going forward. The goblins were initially stylised, but this was altered due to client feedback resulting in the more realistic “printlings”. This helped solidify the direction of the project, aiming for an almost optical-illusion-like approach where the creatures would burst out at the audience revealing the rafters and wires behind the screens. I made a quick mock-up render to convey this new approach to the team.
I knew this would be the most complicated Printworks show to date, so I created an animatic with many rounds of internal and client feedback to get the animation as finalised as possible before jumping into 3D.
My approach to animation was to treat the printlings like characters in a game, creating a library of ‘states’ that I would blend between. This included a number of idles depending on where the printlings would be, locomotion cycles, transitions and bespoke action. I also layered a few different facial animations to create more variations. Here are some examples of these animations working together.
My approach to animation was to treat the printlings like characters in a game, creating a library of ‘states’ that I would blend between. This included a number of idles depending on where the printlings would be, locomotion cycles, transitions and bespoke action. I also layered a few different facial animations to create more variations. Here are some examples of these animations working together.
Printlings Christmas
The success of the printlings caused them to be adopted as the Printwork’s defacto mascot and we were briefed with creating more animations with them, the first being a Christmas scene. The idea was a snowglobe factory where the printlings would act as workers whilst causing mischief. This project was quite ambitious as it was to be a looping animation that linked all four screens through interaction with each other. The timing and rhythm of the factory were the most important elements to lock down to achieve this so I first created a layout pass based on the concept provided.
After the animation of the factory was set up to loop and connect the screens, I created cycles for the printlings that used the same timings as the machinery so both could be looped. I also created some variations on these cycles to showcase the printlings different personalities as well as unique models for the snowglobes based on iconic Manchester buildings.
The 16:9 screen was particularly enjoyable as the snowglobes provided some depth to the scene and the close-up camera allowed me to be more subtle and expressive whilst animating the printlings.
Printlings Olympics
We were briefed to create a piece in response to the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics. I pitched the idea of creating animations in the style of zoetropes inspired by different sports which would be layered to fill the screens.
We didn’t go through with this idea however and instead focused on the printlings participating in the games themselves. I created the animation for the commentator gremlins; having them discuss the on screen events and reacting to the highs and lows of the games.