David Wilson's Royal Blood Promo is an Epic Animated Gorefest

Colonel Blimp Director David Wilson has collaborated with renowned animator Christy Karacas and Finish Post Production to create ‘Out of the Black’, the half-graphically animated, half-live action psycho-delic promo for multi-Brit Award nominees Royal Blood. 

Superjail! Animator, Karacas, brings his signature violent psychedelic animation to the project, complementing the band’s fast-paced pop-rock track. Post-production was carried out at Finish, who provided the colour grade and extensive visual effects work to knit the promo together. The promo was a truly transatlantic collaboration between artists and director situated in LA, New York and London.

Colourist Julien Biard comments: “Having worked with David on the last Beagle Street campaign, I was really excited about working with him on this project. David is based in LA and he couldn’t be in the grading suite with me so we used a remote grading system, where I’m grading in London and David is at another facility in LA. It’s great because both suites are linked up by an almost instantaneous feed so he could see every adjustment of the grade in real time, despite the 5000 miles separating us!”

David Wilson comments on Finish’s input, “They worked tirelessly to elevate the piece. Like with the majority of Post Production this is done in ways that are often very difficult to spot, but that’s only because they did an incredible job. The result lived up to my dreams. I dreamed BIG on this one!”

Director David Wilson comments “I became a fan of Christy’s AdultSwim show, Superjail! a few years ago. It was Christy’s incredibly inventive fight sequences and love of hand drawn animation that made me obsess over his work. I love hand drawn animation. It’s where my directing career began, and I still fill my free time over a light box, drawing away.”

The narrative is centred upon a fantastical world of graphic cartoon violence, as a service-station heist takes a bizarre turn. An Easter bunny-disguised alien leads a posse of holiday-costumed creatures – consisting of a snowman, a pumpkin, an ice cream cone and a walking heart – into a blood-pumping, body-slamming, head-exploding showdown with the cops.

David explains, “I wanted to give Christy as much creative freedom as possible whilst making sure the animation and the live action would still sync together. I would give Christy the starting point of which characters were fighting, where their geographical placing was on the set, and which characters would die. It was then up to Christy to create fight sequence, knowing the in-and-out points.”

Finish Flame Artist Judy Roberts and Colourist Julien Biard helped integrate the animated scenes with the live-action in what proved to be a highly complex post job.

Flame Artist Judy Roberts comments: “One of our key jobs was to create several big matte paintings, the main one being the backdrop for a scene where the service station employee confronts the aliens in costumes. A smashed up helicopter, cars and a dead body, were all added to the clean plate using hand textured CGI renders, and various supplied photographic elements. There were also a few shots, which needed extra blood passes, particularly the very last one of the rabbit, which was composited in Flame by Andy Copping.

Another key job for us was to engineer movement in the car crash. On the shoot the actor was running and jumping onto a stationary car, so we built the car crash out of various plates.

The film is incredibly unique in its style and it’s been a real labour of love for the Director David. It’s really personal to him, as he animates himself”