ADC Awards
ADC Annual Awards is the oldest continuously running industry award show in the world, with an incredible legacy of over 100 years. These awards celebrate the very best in advertising, digital media, graphic and publication design, packaging and product design, motion, experiential and spatial design, photography, illustration and fashion design – all with a focus on artistry and craftsmanship.
Category
Motion / Film / Title Sequences
Annual ID
ADC104_MOT029S
The Decameron is a comedic romp through plague-torn Italy in the 1300’s. For the show’s opening sequence, a frenzy of mischievous, hand-inked animated rats swarm and scatter to tell stories of desire, escape, sickness, hope, desperation, prayer, lust, and re-birth…all in the face of impending death.
The sequence begins with a single rat emerging from an invisible hole. As the rat population grows ever-stronger, they scatter and scurry into abstract formations. Eventually, hoards form by the thousands to represent grand scenes; a spilling chalice of wine, praying hands, gravestones, and decomposing skulls. The scenes are continually interrupted by smaller, quirky stories featuring individual rats. They are coughed out of sickly mouths, disappear down holes, only to re-emerge as a critical part of a new scene. The massive hoard ultimately re-groups into the actual letterforms of “The Decameron” title. Finally, a single rat takes his last staggering steps toward death. Near his overturned corpse, a pair mate frantically. A frenzy of rats race madly toward the camera, covering the screen in blackness.
The production came together through uncommon bedfellows, where hand-drawn animation combines with cutting-edge particle and 3D work to create a film that spans hundreds of years of techniques. The smaller, more intimate rat stories were hand drawn and animated frame-by-frame. The larger hordes of thousands of rats were built using customized particle systems. Extensive experimentation was done to smoothly integrate the particle/CG work with the hand drawn animation- including motion, behavior, body shape, and hand-inked hatching and texturing. The end result is a piece that spans hundreds of years of craft.
The sequence begins with a single rat emerging from an invisible hole. As the rat population grows ever-stronger, they scatter and scurry into abstract formations. Eventually, hoards form by the thousands to represent grand scenes; a spilling chalice of wine, praying hands, gravestones, and decomposing skulls. The scenes are continually interrupted by smaller, quirky stories featuring individual rats. They are coughed out of sickly mouths, disappear down holes, only to re-emerge as a critical part of a new scene. The massive hoard ultimately re-groups into the actual letterforms of “The Decameron” title. Finally, a single rat takes his last staggering steps toward death. Near his overturned corpse, a pair mate frantically. A frenzy of rats race madly toward the camera, covering the screen in blackness.
The production came together through uncommon bedfellows, where hand-drawn animation combines with cutting-edge particle and 3D work to create a film that spans hundreds of years of techniques. The smaller, more intimate rat stories were hand drawn and animated frame-by-frame. The larger hordes of thousands of rats were built using customized particle systems. Extensive experimentation was done to smoothly integrate the particle/CG work with the hand drawn animation- including motion, behavior, body shape, and hand-inked hatching and texturing. The end result is a piece that spans hundreds of years of craft.
2025 Awards
Total Points: 21
Silver Cube
Credits
Production Company
Plains Of Yonder / Seattle
Art Director
Katrina Crawford
Digital Artist
J.a. Duran
Marcos Coral
Mauro Gimferrer
Director
Katrina Crawford
Mark Bashore
Editor
Mark Bashore
Illustrator
Torin Bashore
Motion Designer
Jason Esser
Executive Producer
Paul Williamson
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