Every term, among several other animated shorts, I show my classical animation class Leningrad’s music video, “Ju-Ju” directed by Ilya Naishuller. The video is an animated cyberpunk action scene that I highly recommend to any sci-fi fan because it’s super cool. One day while showing the video I got inspired to do something similar myself as an excuse to bring my Combat Fairy characters to life. I had just finished the first volume of the comic and it seemed like a good way to promote it.

The main inspiration behind the plot was the 2016 film, “Free Fire” about a deal that goes bad in a warehouse, sparking an ongoing shootout for the rest of the movie. Using a warehouse deal gone bad as the backbone I settled on the idea of the fairies rescuing Carpa, the mermaid friend that helps them with a heist in the comic.

With the storyline, set I started doing some rough storyboards, but a big production hurdle was going to be finding a song to use for the core soundtrack. I knew I wanted it to play similarly to a music video and I wanted the energy of a punk rock song to carry the action. Ideally with a female lead vocal because the idea of seeing 5 fairy women kicking ass while a dude screams in the background just felt wrong. So I scoured Band Camp for days looking for songs that fit the criteria that I was looking for. It wasn’t easy and for a while I thought I’d have to settle for something different. Then, finally, I found what seemed like the perfect match. A song called, “Because I’m Awesome” by a band called The Dollyrots. It was the exact vibe I wanted! I very nearly talked myself out of contacting them though when I noticed how prolific their career already was, I figured there’s no way they’d be willing to donate a song, and who knows if they’d even get my message. But you never know if you don’t try. So I emailed them. In less than 24 hours they replied. It turned out that “Because I’m Awesome” was done for an earlier album which they didn’t have complete control over the rights to. But they directed me to another album they had produced independently and said I’d be welcome to choose anything from there. I found the song, “Dance Like A Maniac” which I would argue was an even better fit than what I had originally asked for.

In exchange for the song I offered to create some art for them, which eventually happened in the form of a Powerpuff Girls parody image of both the Dollyrots, Luis and Kelly and their kids for a t-shirt graphic, and I’ve since gone on to create a bunch more art for them, usually during the Christmas merch season. I’m also legitimately a big fan of their music now too.

Finishing the rest of the short film was a lot of work, and while the runtime isn’t anywhere near the length of some of my other projects, the level of action and the complexities of the characters was pretty painstaking. The end result is probably the closest I’ve ever come to my original vision of any of my animated projects. Having since watched it a million times I of course see areas I would love to have done differently. But what else is new?