I'm being sincere and I'm being human. I'm making mistakes or I'm doing things correctly, but I'm being human regardless. I'm talking about my pain and my joy, and I'm not saying it with words but mainly with colors and shapes. That's what I tried to do with the utmost sincerity and humility of a child.
Alex AbreuI tried to exploit such freedom to create those drawings like if I was a boy. I tried to draw with that freedom and that love that I remember from being a child and spending a day drawing without worrying about whether what I'm drawing is real or strange.
Alex AbreuThat was a very natural process because as I was creating the animatic I added music clips as reference of the kind of music I wanted in the film. These were from musicians like Nanรก Vasconcelos and Barbatuques, the body percussion group.
Alex AbreuA little bit more than 50% of what you see on screen is handcrafted and the other 50% was about emulating these textures on the computer. However, for us, when we were making it, we had to believe it was all handcrafted.
Alex AbreuThe film [Boy and the World]gave me the possibility to create a new language. Animation is a very rich medium but hasn't fully been exploited by artists. Often artists are trapped by words.
Alex AbreuMaking a film from the point of view of a young boy's eyes opened the door to another universe with lots of freedom and to explore a new dimension. This was achieved as I started doing things that were close to what exists in a child's universe.
Alex AbreuAt the end of the process we called a market research company to find out whom the film was for or what was the target audience. We didn't have a lot of money to release the film, so in order for it to play in cinemas, which are dominated by films with much larger marketing budgets, we had to discover whom the film was for.
Alex Abreu