2006 | TYGER, SHORT FILM | PERSONAL WORK

Emerging Talent No. 7: Guilherme Marcondes
Although currently directing for Hornet, Guilherme Marcondes has worked with a number of stellar studios around the world, creating work that blurs the frontiers between genres, techniques and media. “I think it’s more inspiring when things fall between traditional definitions,” Marcondes says. “When you do something, and you can’t explain if it’s ‘animation’ or ‘film,’ if it’s ‘humor’ or ‘horror,’ that’s when it starts to get interesting for me.” Jonathan Notarro, creative director of Brand New School, says, “Gui has a sense of humor that I think is maybe a bit dark and ironic, which is hard to control and tells you a lot about himself. He takes risks in his work, using analog craft and experimentation, and probably doesn’t always know exactly what he’s going to get. I think that takes a lot of talent and courage in today’s commercial climate.”

“I like to mix animation and film as much as possible,” explains Marcondes. “That’s where I find my expression.” He tends to have the idea first, then chooses a combination of techniques to achieve his vision. “I’ve done films using puppets, 3D, 2D, actors in costumes, time-lapse projections, motion capture, stop motion, hand-cranked automata,” he explains. “Most of the time, more than one of these in the same film, like my best known work, Tyger.” This short film is based loosely on William Blake’s poem “The Tyger,” and has won more than 20 international awards, including two in the prestigious Clermont Ferrand Festival in France. Marcondes’ commercial clients have included Nickelodeon, Diesel, The Cartoon Network, BBC2, J&B scotch and Virgin Comics. He’s currently at work on the opening sequence for the Guy Moshe feature film Bunraku. Marcondes was born in São Paulo, Brazil. He has a degree in Architecture but never worked in the field. He started his career as an illustrator in 2000, when he joined the design and animation studio Lobo in São Paulo as a runner. He worked his way up, learning animation on the job. After directing award-winning spots, he left Brazil for London, where he became a freelance director for MTV International. He returned to São Paulo, directed Tyger, then moved to L.A. to work as creative director at Motion Theory for a year. In 2007 he joined Hornet and has recently moved to New York.

Marcondes’ work is rich in texture and symbolism. It is both bizarre and beautiful in its hybrid of storytelling techniques. “I’d like to do more live action in my work,” says Marcondes. “I’m becoming more interested in narrative pieces. I’d like to extend these surreal worlds I create into longer histories. For now, I’m happy in having more opportunities to apply my work to commissioned projects and establish my style, give it more visibility.”
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