"TOP HIT"
5 Minutes of ACTION COMEDY inspired by the 70's and 80's
In late 70's Los Angeles, an impulsive girl makes her first burglary in a luxurious villa. But she doesn't know that the eccentric owner, a martial arts master and funk artist, is on the scene and that her overprotective father is here to take her home by force.
I wanted this project to be a love letter to everything that shaped me and to what I loved. We borrowed fighting game philosophies to design our characters, classic Hong kong action movies and modern action games for our choreography and cinematography; and finally, a mix of old-school anime (City Hunter) mixed with the painterly look from Team Fortress 2 for our final look.
As an animator, I also wanted the movie to feel distinct from what you usually see in short movies. We aimed to emulate the high-octane animation style from Studio Trigger in 3D mixed with fighting game animation snappiness.
Having only 5 minutes to establish a world and characters, we noticed that we had the same constraints as old fighting games.
Characters had to immediately convey everything about themselves while also being endearing enough for people to care about them.
We applied that idea to TOP HIT by giving characters classic archetypes with their own twist and unique personalities.
Characters
Riley Siu
RUBY
Ruby is the hot-headed protagonist of the movie; she fits the high energy glass canon archetype and represents classic Hong Kong action movie heroes.
Dakota took her in when she was 8 and they now live as a happy albeit chaotic family where her love is displayed through punches and witty sarcasm.
In TOP HIT, she tries to follow her father's footsteps as a criminal against his will, which won't be easy with her frequent asthma attacks.
Dakota
Dustin DeMarcus
Dakota is a big body grappler and represents classic Blaxploitation heroes. He dreams of opening his own restaurant.
His dark, lonely past as a henchman and underground fighter forged him into what he is today: a retired criminal dad with an annoying hyper-active daughter. Not exactly what he had in mind for a peaceful life but at least he's no longer alone.
Approaching his sixties, Dakota says he wears sunglasses "for style", hiding the fact that he's slowly losing eyesight.
Sly Sam
Samuel S. Samson
Sly Sam is a famous Funk artist and Action Movie star. The most important thing to his eyes is entertainment.
Unfortunately for everyone else, what entertains him the most right now is martial arts, to the point where he became a master and regularly baits thugs inside his mansion to kick their asses under "self-defense".
Character Research
The base ideas for the designs were pretty much set from the beginning with only minor design and proportion changes. Ruby ended up being the one that changed the most as our teachers said she seemed a bit bland compared to the other two characters.
Environment
In an action movie, the setting has to be it's own character because of how much it defines the choreography. A lot of back and forth had to be done with the storyboard for the action and mansion to make sense.
Thankfully, walls and windows can be used as doors with enough force applied which made traversal easier.
We also wanted to include at least one set piece that was never seen before in martial art movies, which was a Music Studio in our case.
The original setting was completely different.
TOP HIT was originally called SLAM FUNK and took pace in a music shop with the same name.
Dakota and Ruby were supposed to fight each other with instruments for a valuable vinyl before teaming against Sly Sam, the shop owner that baited them to his shop to assassinate them.
Posters!
Much like the characters, the logo went through minimal changes. We thought it already fitted the film's idea of mixing Music and Martial Arts.
The poster was a bit harder to pin down.
We wanted a vinyl to be present and for Dakota and Ruby to appear behind either Sly Sam's afro or said vinyl.
We ended up with the vinyl instead so we could have Sly Sam pose to remind you that things are about to get FUNKY!
Poster research
Posters and album covers used as background props for the movie. Some of them reference movies from our promotion!
Keyshot and Style Research
