Cherryflava

Watch out for Cape Town’s own Blackheart Gang

Posted on 31. Oct, 2006 by Jonathan Cherry in Design, Streetflava

This could well be the dodgy headline gracing the front pages of next week’s Daily Voice.

But instead of ruthless panga-wielding villains with capped teeth – Cape Town-based ‘The Blackheart Gang’ may be the next international superstars to emerge on the global animation screen.

We caught wind of the story via a reader’s tip off, and ironically – when researching their background, found loads of rave reviews of their work on foreign blogs.
Which is a crying shame, when you think of how we don’t appreciate our own.

Causing all the fuss is a short film called ‘The Tale of How’.

Completely unlike Shrek or South Park, the film is dark, emotional, odd and totally excellent. Like a mini, animated opera – the original poetic soundtrack was also composed and recorded by the Gang who all have other full-time jobs, doing industry-related things.

The film is self-financed and took nine months to create.

The Gang consists of:

Ree is a illustrator with red hair, freckles and braces; she also has a
very short temper, a ticking time bomb of sorts.  Markus is determined
and strong, his heavy noble brow is set under a constant frown, he
makes music and writes. Jannes is like God, he takes all of Ree and
markus’s bits and pieces and turns them move. TOGETHER THEY ARE THE
BLACKHEART GANG!!!!!!!!!!

Ree Treweek – Illustrator, concept and character developer for The BHG. Ree is 27 and works as a freelance illustrator.

Markus Smit (Wormstorm) – Musician, concept developer and writer for
The BHG. Markus is 24 and has a musicstudio called SayThankYou.

Jannes Hendrikz – Compositor and Creative Director for The BHG.
Jannes is 26 and works as a compositor and designer for BlackGinger
Visual Effects.

More about their projects:

Here’s a bit about the bigger story…….
The Household is a fantastical realm deep inside the earth. It is
inhabited by extinct creatures such as dodos and mammoths also teddy
bears, talking panda’s and others that could only be thought of in
dreams.  The function of the household is to purify our bath water and
to make soap.

The Tale of How story:

The Tale of How forms the second part of a three part story and tells the story of the Paranas or Dodo’s as they are know
to you. 
The paranas appear from the blossoms of the tree on Otto’s (the octopus)
head. We also learn that Otto has now become the island known to many
as Maurtius. Otto is insane and eats the paranas. They’re not happy and
deside to escape. A very clever, wise and magical being appears to
them, his name is Eddy the Engineer. Eddy is a white mouse, with
flowers for a tail and he sails around on a bunch of bananas and a
spoon. Together they trick Otto, and the paranas escape.

There is also a series of prints on the Tale of How, that will form part of a book later.

Knowing what it takes to put visuals and audio like this together – its a stunning film. And hopefully the Blackheart Gang can carry on proudly representing SA on the creative world stage – full time.

Movie: The Tale of How – MP4 (70Mb)

Audio: Intro – MP3
Second half – MP3

More: Blackheart Gang: Tale of How – Motionographer
Spooky Movie – The Black heart Gang Present’s The Tale Of How – Kris Abel’s blog