Fusing live theatre, dance and music, ‘Olion’ was a theatre show that reimagined and modernised the ‘Mabinogion’ inspired tale of the drowning of ‘Caer Arianrhod’. Franwen, the theatre company based in Bangor, North Wales wanted us to brand the show and create a trailer to spearhead the promotional campaign.

We worked closely with visual dramaturg Marc Rees and Franwen’s creative director Gethin Evans to create a film that seeked to captured the essence of the live show and replicate the uncanny mystical nature of the story through animation. The production team were keen for us to visualize as much of the narrative as possible so we took inspiration from the plans and art boards of the design team to create Arianrhod’s reimagined world. Dark subterranean scenes were created in 3d, inhabited by mysterious cloaked figures lit by moving ethereal ghost lights. We also created an aquarium that housed her sunken castle which would be recreated physically for a scene in the live production. The show’s actors hadn’t been cast by the time we had gone into production so we created our own character of Arianrhod in 3D. We imbued her animation with a small element of the uncanny, her movements are a little too quick for a normal person and when she screams her mouth hyper extends more than a normal mouth would into a bigger more unnatural shape.

The music for the film was created by the show’s composer Alexander Comana, using elements taken from the main score. This brought a unique and compelling sound to the trailer and moved it stylistically even closer to the heart of the production. We supplied the marketing department with high resolution frames from the trailer which were used for posters of various sizes and general promotional material. The logo was designed and animated referencing the circle motifs used in the production to identify Arianrhod’s tribe, The two ‘o’s in OLION form the opposing sides of the show and appear as the moon and sun. The live show in Bangor was a sell out and we loved going up to North wales to watch it and be part of it.

High resolution images for posters at 300dpi and animated logo

Everything was created in Cinema 4d and rendered in Redshift. The project was comped and edited in Aftereffects. Below are some production shots of the 3d