First of all, this is the first book I read in my early childhood. This story has always been with me anyway. When I realized that I wanted to make my own animated film based on Pinocchio, I started by searching for a theme. At this stage, each director must answer important questions for himself. What about I want to tell? What is the theme of the film?
In any case, I wasn’t going to make an illustrative video sequence for the book, I wanted to tell my story. The original novel is so deep and multifaceted that every director can reveal his own theme in it. The theme of my film is Friendship.

Actually Coot is the main character along with Pinocchio. He has his own character arc, from a grumpy old man dreaming of retirement to a caring mentor and Pinocchio’s oldest friend. The prototype of this character was a cricket from the original story. I needed a character who would take care of Pinocchio like Dad. Physically, Coot is a bottle, a phial with the water of life, and his job is to create miracles and even revive certain objects, on behalf of his boss, a magician. But there was a “malfunction in the system”, and the wizard mistakenly decided that it would be wonderful for a carpenter named Carlo to revive his puppet named Pinocchio to replace his missing son. Coot, as a performer, was going to do this with the last drop of the water of life and happily retire. But then it turned out that nobody needs Pinocchio alive, carpenter Carlo is shocked and does not want to recognize his son in him. Coot realizes that now he has to take care of Pinocchio himself, like a real dad. For him, this is a big challenge that has changed his character. The relationship between Coot and Pinocchio develops into a real friendly relationship, which can be between a father and son.

I really wanted to make a detailed and elaborated world in which this whole story exists. I just couldn’t imagine how you can make a movie about the puppet theater and old Italy without a detailed world. I personally like the visual style “steampunk”, and I decided to make this film with elements of this style. At the initial stage, he probably did not fully realize the scale of the conceived visual style. As a result, the work on the film stretched over a long 7-8 years. During this time, and thanks to Pinocchio, I managed to develop the animation department of Studio Asymmetric in Barcelona. The first animators who came to work in in Barcelona started making scenes from the movie Pinocchio. As Pinocchio’s journey through the film passes through different countries and continents, the difficulty increased with the variety of new locations and characters. Thus, Pinocchio challenged the studio of Asymmetric, which made the studio bigger and stronger.

From unexpected moments.. According to colleagues, Pinocchio’s character became more and more like me every year. Part of it is probably because when creating the animation, I used motion capture technology and played almost all the actions of the character personally. Therefore, Pinocchio has the plasticity of movement inherent in me. But in some unimaginable way, his face also changed a little and became like mine, although none of our artists intentionally did this, there was never such a task for Pinocchio to look like a director.

The scene in the abandoned park, it turned out to be very strange, mysterious, and nothing happens in it, our characters just walk and talk. All the time I wanted to add and show some kind of danger that is hiding somewhere in the bushes.. but I overcame this desire and left it as it is. As a result, I really like the atmosphere and I’m happy with how the scene turned out.
But if we talk about the whole film, then I’m proud of how it turned out to do the work of the director of photography (DOP). In order for the world to become three-dimensional, it is not enough just to have 3D animation and characters, it is very important that the camera works, emphasizing composition, three-dimensionality, expressiveness. I paid special attention to this in this film. And as a pleasant result, after one of the focus groups (test screening), I heard the opinion that the film has so strong 3D effect on the big screen, as if you were watching it with stereoscopic glasses. This was nice to hear.

I would like distributors to focus their marketing on the original style, stunning visuals, lively atmosphere and the spirit of the original story. That’s what you have to go see it in cinemas for. This is an attraction film, but at the same time with a deep meaning and an important theme.
The main thing in the film is a great adventure, the dynamics of the narrative, many different locations and characters that meet on Pinocchio’s way in this fascinating adventure.
Perhaps the film doesn’t look very attractive from a commercial point of view from the sellers’ point of view. There is an opinion among distributors that everything should be “simpler! children don’t need all these details, all this texture,” supposedly children are used to a simple and “clean” picture, and that’s partly why they are wary of looking at the film as a commercial product. But I’m sure I did everything right, the atmosphere of the film is formed from the variety of details. Without them, it would not be so unique. And the nowadays children’s audience really appreciates computer games with good detailed CGI so I’m sure that watching Pinocchio will be quite a familiar and comfortable experience for children and teenagers.

I’m currently working as a director on a live action film in which the main characters are animated, computer-generated. Virtual, fictional, and animated characters are my passion, and it’s something I’ve always loved creating. Now I’m doing this as part of full-length projects, which imposes a lot of technical difficulties along with creative ones. I also have an original idea that has been waiting for many years to come to life. The story is called “Blood Hockey,” and by the will of fate, no one has stolen this idea yet, although I have a prototype trailer and characters on my website since 2017. It was at that time that the idea to make Pinocchio was born and my hockey project went to the bench, waiting in the wings.

In my case, I am the owner and managing director of a 3D animation and visual effects studio. And only this fact allowed me to finish the Pinocchio movie the way I had planned it. If you don’t have your own team, your own technical support, then it’s naive and pointless to start this way. As the film gets into the hands of those who pay and make decisions, the film begins to adapt to them, changes like a living organism and ceases to be yours. Actually, this is what my film about. About friends and team!

Industry professionals may note the fact that the film was created with a much smaller budget than it seems at first glance. This adventure movie is action-packed and created by an independent studio without a big budget. At Asymmetric Studio, we know how to achieve the best quality with a small budget.

At the moment, thanks to test screenings and authoritative opinions and reviews, I can say that I know all the strengths and weaknesses of my film. I don’t really want to talk about that. But it would be interesting to talk, in case you are making a sequel to a movie or even a computer game, what properties should Pinocchio be endowed with? What is the genre of possible computer game? It would be interesting to know the opinion of the viewer about this.