I wanted the characters to be designed in a way that created a bit of discipline with how they can be animated. Being essentially 'salamis with features', a lot of the personality had to be driven from their appearance..more so than their gestures or expressions. In fact their expressions were almost as limited as their movement, so I ended up being very selective about what glasses, moustaches, hair and bow ties were telling you about the characters. These characters still had to be warm and accessible, but not in the traditional sense with huge smiles and winks. We really wanted to create pockets of awkward silence and also let the environments tell a story too.

The policeman had to be a little ridiculous and a little fascist at the same time. Being a 'balsamic vinegar policeman', he didn't really have a real policeman's job. As a result I exaggerated his moustache, chest and general pomp to make up for his lack oftangible authority.

Our Californian hippie and bee keeper continued the sausage-man aesthetic.

A vital part of the execution was the textural movement in all the shots. I took a selection of paintings from my 4 year old son (and his friends, thanks Lola!) - there's something about that cheap paint they use which doesn't quite sink into the paper, it more just smears over the surface leaving all the brush lines exposed. I took a series of photos of different details of the paintings, then made little animations of the textures averaging them together. When these are overlaid and screened into the artwork you get really warm finish and lose that cleanness. By selectively applying this technique to different objects and colours you get a bit of a stop-mo feel too.

I really wanted there to be a layer of graphic design to offset all the hand crafted elements. I ended going with Neutra type face (from 'House Industries') which is modern, but has that Deco flavour too.

A big part of this project was just sitting and painting vistas and environments in Photoshop. I find this kind of work really relaxing. I used a lot of food textures in the landscapes - and the paint textures were really important for disrupting the clean edges that are synonymous with photoshop/illustrator artwork.

Detail of California pre compositing.

This is a close-up detail of the shop corner. You can see the half-tone pattern and hand brushwork that gives you an organic edge. It's really a matter of taking vector artwork and hand retouching it until it doesn't look vector any more. Little bit tedious..but worth it.