Humouring the Fates believes in animation’s awesome power to create brands. Whether it’s a feature length film, a TV series, a commercial campaign, a web-based clip, or just a little pre-visualization… we help our clients develop the strongest, character driven material for their communications.
We love to push the boundaries of 2D, 2.5D, or 3D animation and we look forward to doing it for you.
Founded in 1995, Humouring the Fates is a full service animation studio specializing in hand drawn animation. With a dedicated crew of directors, animators and writers, HTF has made it a mission to invent unique animation techniques and bold creative visions.
Call us at our main office: 813-253-3283 or NYC: 212-844-9002
Here’s one we made, that took us to Park City a little while back, as well as SXSW, SDCC, SFFF… hell all the majors. The story goes, we were coming right out of a sickeningly sweet Barbie Movie and had a lot of pent up aggression. We were also really ready to explore the modern perception of war and violence through the eyes of an old Japanese woman… haunted by dreams of a previous life.
We had fun with the creative department at AKQA on this spot which is pretty straightforwardly put as: “A woman’s kickboxing practice jumps into cosmic mode as she rescues the planet from impending doom.”
or in ad speak:
“The Nike Women campaign Be Transformed is specifically targeting young women in the Asia-Pacific region. It encourages personal transformation with confidence and strength through sports, activities and training programs. It features personal stories form athletes in that region: Sonia Kong (beach volleyball) and Flora Hon (hip hop dance) from Hong Kong, Mel Lozano (ultimate Frisbee) from the Philippines and Hannah Lo (kick-boxing) from Malaysia, among others.” Basically, we just had a blast making this 2D cel animation commercial from script to screen. It’s made in a sort of modern, hyper anime style and all the effects are hand drawn. The music for this animated commercial wasn’t used in the final and was a track from our house band Roppongi’s Ace. So don’t fret if you’re wishing that track was unused, it’s still a virgin ready to placed into your animated commercial whenever you’re ready.
Did you hear about the Halo Anime?
Wouldja’ like to watch a little of an animated episode we made here at Humoring the Fates with the supa’ wicked awesome cast from Rooster Teeth? This is the very first installment of Microsoft’s Game Studio’s upcoming animated Halo brand. Lots more to come for this exciting new animated branch of the most successful video game franchise to date. We were glad to be a part of this from the very beginning.
^^– Just click that image up there –^^
Do keep this off youtube and other video sites please.
Click above to watch the Nike:Punching Bag spot (not final sound).
Ricky Engelberg, Nike’s digital director for Asia Pacific, sums up the theme of these spots real nice: “The ‘be transformed’ initiative celebrates the revolution across all aspects of women’s lives. Nike aims to inspire them to take control of their own personal development and understand the value in training.”
This was quite an honor. We got to produce the visuals in Josh Sapan’s Keynote address for the opening of this year’s MipTV. Josh is arguably the most brilliant CEO in the industry. He’s the guy that’s greenlit Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Portlandia, The Killing, Hell on Wheels, and well… we could keep going. He’s a true bad-ass allowing creative minds to make television that other networks wouldn’t touch with with MTV’s d*ck. Below you can watch the 2012 MipTV Keynote and Q&A in it’s entirety. It is a very interesting look into how AMC Networks and other Pay TV producers have been successful with great content in the age of the Digital Demon.
We’d like to thank Will, Adam, Judd, and all the rest at FoD for seeing the humour in John Oates reuniting with his mustache. Here is our little teaser that got released a short while ago, for the show J-Stache:
Yes, that is John Oates as John Oates. Dave Attell is quite the dirty voice of an even dirtier mustache. John may have crafted countless chart topping hits, but his true calling is to star in an animated show were he embraces his former iconic self… for better or worse.
We went with a more retro 80′s cartoon look (read as poorly drawn) with the animation on this one, and purposefully let the director, Jesse Norton, draw most of the animation on this. He grew a handle bar mustache and went on a bender of cheap blended scotch, Clint cigars, elk jerky, and reruns of the 1988 season of Geraldo’s talk show. This was the result.
Click above to watch the Nike Women : Be Transformed campaigns’ Bike spot (not final sound).
The campaign runs exclusively in the Asia Pacific region across cinema, TV, digital (mobile and website), print, out-of-home and in-store. It includes a 110-metre long building wrap of Beijing’s International Plaza, one of the largest department stores in the city. (check out our Print & Design section to see that work and the 2 story sculpture of the punching bag monster!)
This campaign was designed to challenge women to understand the value of training and to rally around a manifesto to become stronger and more confident. We’re very happy that Nike and AKQA chose the medium of animation to execute this creative vision… and even happier that we got to build the animation for them.
This is a real email that was sent from our dear friend and the real-life basis for the Joe is Japanese character, Koga Sato. His email was such a relief to read, as we had not heard from anyone yet after the earthquake. It was inspiring and goofy. So much so, that we felt compelled to illustrate it and pass it on to the world (with Koga’s permission). This email made everyone at the animation studio feel a sense of duty to donate time to make this mini comic.
The comic has been reprinted by Wired Magazine, New York Times by columnist Andy Revkin, CREATIVE, Advertising Age, Ain’t It Cool News, Bleeding Cool, Comic Book Resources, and a lot more that we’ve probably missed. Please share it, post it, and print it as much as you like. It is a creative commons license so you can do anything with it as long as it is presented in its entirety and credit is given. We hope you enjoy this little read. If you do, we ask that you consider donations to the Search Dog Foundation. It’s an unsung group that has sent rescue dogs to find people in over 75 deployments- including the World Trade Center attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti disaster, and now in Fukushima, Japan. We’re hoping our little odd-ball comic will support a lesser known group of (furry) heroes.
A little while ago we set out to make a series about a longtime friend of the studio, Joe McCunney. Since we’re an animation studio we figured we should do it as an anime with Joe providing his very own voice… and we never really thought to give him a script either. We’d simply record real conversations with him in Tokyo, and figure out how a cartoon was supposed to develop from that. We hit animation gold. We’ve produced a 330 page graphic novel detailing his real life adventures… and we’ll just stay… they are CRAZY. Here is a new(er) episode of Joe is Japanesethat now has Japanese & English subtitles and a little more sound design. A new version is coming soon with some fixes to the animation mistakes.
Regardless, we’re hoping you like this one as much as we do. It is guaranteed to teach you one new Japanese word. Oh and yes, in real life the Island Masta is almost as much of an idiot as he appears in this episode. Almost.
We’d like to thank Will, Adam, Judd, and all the rest at 
