Watch HERBIVORES, Lock-in 4's finished animation.
- Liam Gilbey
- Oct 29
- 5 min read
At 11am on Friday the 5th of September, we began our 4th animated lock-in, creating a film in 48 hours. By 11am on Sunday the 7th, we were done, successfully finishing and creating HERBIVORES, written and directed by our very own Liam Gilbey.
The film follows three unnamed characters (that we named simply HAIR, HAT and BALD) that live in a world where meat is illegal. After an announcement that the last cow in the world is coming on tour to the UK, they head off on a deranged mission to kill her.
We're really happy with how it turned out. Let's hear from the director about what went into making this film.
Liam's Notes
I was really happy with how this film came to be. On the morning of the 5th, I pitched a few options to the team - we've always been collaborative with our decision making, and I knew I had very concrete ideas for all these films, so it was my way of not being too controlling. Ultimately we picked HERBIVORES (which, to be honest, would have been my choice anyways) and ran with the idea.
The structure came together quickly. With a heist movie format, you can use familair tropes and structures that an audience is familiar with to tell dense stories in short timeframes. I knew what I wanted the beginning to be, hoping to get across the world and the character's want as quick as possible to hook people in. We did have a fair amount of debate about the ending, and pitched a number of directions it could go in (from fun to heartwarming to horifying) and ultimately settled on something ominous and vague but still fun and easy enough to interpret.
When setting out, regardless of the story, I had a list of things I'd like to try, and we ticked pretty much every one of the list. That ranged from using a square aspect ratio to the limited colour palette. I originally wanted more to be made in After Effects (to hypothetically save time) but ultimately sticking with one software helped keep things simple.
Unlike a lot of our story-based work (which is often short and detailed) I wanted to put story first, even if it meant having somewhat limited animation. I'm happy with the story - it's paced well and easy to follow. At the same time, the animation is more advanced than what I imagined, meaning we get to have a bit of both.
Ultimately the film is a little bit political, but I wanted it to be fun first, which I think we've achieved through sound, visusals and scripting. It's not really a film about meat consumsion or the morals of it, but rather how governments can control us, or how we can fight for the wrongs things in our real world, while the ruling class pull the wool over our eyes (or eat us).
Every year we work with guests - our friends and family who come down to say hello, keep us company, encourage us and (most prominently) add a small drawing for the film. This element has always been hard. While the film will have one mains style, the guests will contribute a whole range of works, made with different materials, standards and colours. Making those contributions blend in seamlessly is always a challenge, so I gave guests a choice of three things to contribute - graffiti, secret code or drawings of cows.
We eneded up with our biggest turnout ever, and thus, more drawings than we knew what to do with. Ultimately the drawings have become paintings in the hallway, graffiti on buildings and code in the credits. Hopefully, eventually we'll be able to add code into other places like computer screens. If you're a viewer, you can easily work out the code with a little patience - here's a hint: in the credits, the word Herbivores is in code and in english.
The colour grading is unique in this film - A request of mine was to make it feel analogue, and by using a number of stacked effects we gave it that crunch it was looking for. While it brings the flat visuals to life, unfortunately it makes some of the contribution art hard to see - sorry! It was all in the name of art, and your contributions help bring colour and depth to the world we created.
At the end of the day it couldn't have gone better. We're older than we were when we made Little Monkey, Big World In 2022, and found the 48-hours of animation more grueling than ever - in the future if we're to do any more lock-ins, I imagine the format will change to be a little more sleep-friendly.
We're even considering entering this into film festivals which is something we don't ever get to do as a for-service animation studio. It was the pipe dream when making it, and I'm happy it's an option. I definitely think this can do well in some niche categories.
Anyways, thanks to :
The core team, Liam Gilbey (aka myself), Amy Howard, Finley Geen and Eleanor Linder
Jake Taylor for providing music (and going back and re-making it - sorry!)
Amber Richards for hosting, looking after our guests so we had more time to animate. Also for scanning in all our documents, tidying and DJing until 5am (very badly, but points for enthusiasm) for our morale.
Jess Brown for designing the title art, and Michael Chapman for sourcing the sound effects.
Our guest artists: Bash Medcalf, Joe Prendergast, Lucy Burman-Smith, Lena Brewster, Benjamin Wilson, Noah Carolan, Benjamin Larkworthy, Billy Lubach, Libby Storer, Jose McGill, Matilda McGill, Myrtle McGill, Vini Pereira, Nic Gordon, Ben Auld, Matti Hopgood, Sophie Rattue, Shannon Conway, Adrienne Wilkinson - and all the way from Florida, Ace Passey.
And, of cource, GP (Tom Scott) from Albion Games for providing the coffee!
Keep an eye out for our behind the scenes video! It's gonna be long so it may take a few weeks to stitch together. We made sure to take more socials content this year (thanks Amy) which is great for feeding the all-hungry algorithm.
It's meant the world to me - as the last lock-in director, this was something I had to wait a long time for and my mind was buzzing with stories. I tried very hard not to fantasise and have it not live up to my expectations. At the end of the day I got to do the role I love (writing) and the film is as good as I'd hoped. I'm one happy chappy.
See you for the next one. Maybe...
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