Deluxe Motion is a stop motion web series for adults – and disobedient teenagers – that will definitely not make the world better. It features five blameworthy characters, their magical dog and an old gentleman from a remote village. Deluxe Motion pushes the boundaries of absurdity and rudeness through a wide variety of hyperactive skits, presented every day, live on the internet.
Deluxe Motion is nominated for Best International Animation at this year’s webfest. Director and writer, Mathieu Handfield uses a combination of stop-motion and animation to enhance the fast-paced outlandish nature of the series, provoking a kind of humor that Québec isn’t used to.
The humour of your series is quite crude, what reactions have you gotten from your audience?
Actually, it never seemed rude enough! The public really enjoyed seeing these cute little puppets saying and doing the most gruesome things. The audience quickly developed a big attachment towards the characters, everybody had their favorite one, quoting them whenever possible.
Why did you choose to combine stop-motion and animation instead of just using one form?
Using a combined technique makes corrections way easier and is way less time consuming. Since we had to make the most of the (relatively) short time we had in studio the idea of the combined technique seemed obvious. After experimenting with it, we found that not only was it convenient, but it also looked really good! We wouldn’t want to do it any different. It gives a snappy cartoon feeling to the puppets and that’s what we like most about it.
What did you learn from making this series? What would you do differently?
We would plan our shots differently. We wanted to make every sketch separately to make sure we didn’t make any mistakes (we had about 160 to shoot), but we lost a lot of time replacing the floor witch gets destroyed when the puppets are rigged. This was our worst “mistake”. Oh, and also, we would plan killer playlists. We spent 44 days in the dark, at one point, we didn’t know what to listen to anymore and Kris Kross came back WAY to often.
What did you want to achieve in creating this series?
Try out a kind of humor that is not often seen in Québec. The texts in Deluxe Motion aren’t funny by themselves; it’s the editing, the pacing of the sketches and the way we built the “storyline” that made the series fun to watch. Usually, people tend to make it funny on paper. It feels safer, but it’s just not our thing.
How did you choose the platform you released the series on?
The goal was to make it accessible and as easily as possible, so we went multi-platform all the way. It was everywhere so no matter where you shared it, it was easily done. We wanted the series to reach as much people as possible. It worked!
What advice would you give to emerging creators?
Structure yourself. As boring as it sounds, if you go by ear on an animation project, you will end up burning a lot of energy correcting your mistakes later on. And organize your workflow! For Deluxe Motion, for instance, we would record the voices, make a first audio edit for the beat of the scene, go in studio for the stop motion part, make an offline edit, make corrections on the voices if necessary, add the main audio effects, send it in post production animation, re-edit for the online version and then send everything in sound engineering. Add a few back and forth here and there for the corrections, if your workflow structure is not rock solid, you will loose your mind.
How did you approach the marketing of your series?
Honest and impolite. We sold the series with the tone of the series, making fun of ourselves and interacting with the audience.
What was your experience with web series before creating your own?
I participated as an actor in many web series before, but the stop motion in Deluxe Motion made the experience totally different.
What inspired your web series?
We wanted to have fun, to create something unique. We thought about it for a long time and at one point, everything fell into place. The creators had a lot of space to come up with designs that they enjoyed so it felt personal for the whole team, that was very important.
Do you have any future plans for this series?
Season 2 is being written, in French for now. We are starting to look for an international sale to produce it in English in order to reach a larger audience. And we would really like to make action figures of the characters, that would be amazing.
Why did you choose web series as your format?
The tone of Deluxe Motion, the way it is written. It’s short, it’s flashy, it’s easily shareable and it lasts exactly as long as it takes to drop a deuce, so it was a perfect fit for a web series.
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