The Overview

Cafes are amongst the most highly concentrated locations of distinctly different personalities I have ever encountered. In the few minutes it takes me to order my morning latte, I come across so many unique identities each with their story to tell. There’s the locals, Tom and his wife, dismounting their bicycles to have a sit down sip as Rose and her two kids step out holding tiny babyccinos.

Every coffee drinker has a personal preference when it comes to making or ordering their coffees. These preferences can be from an extra hot latte in a double layered takeaway cup to three pumps of hazelnut syrup with chocolate powder on top. I am creating a project that visually embodies the life of an avid coffee drinker in the form of a dog’s persona. Matching the quirks of a certain dog breed to how they would enjoy their daily coffee if they could. A cafe is a universal safe zone, where people from all walks of life converge in one moment in time.

The Target

The target for this project is the people of the city. There is no age group that this project is directed towards but rather for those who can familiarise themselves with coffee drinking to benefit any reason. Students walking to class, office workers out on their lunch breaks, construction workers finishing up their early shifts etc. The aim is to brighten a person’s day as they relate to the Pawfee Please dog characters on the big screen.

The Process

My process for creating this project consisted of lots and lots of references and inspirations from other artists online. I had a strong vision of what my finalised products would look like so I searched for tarot card themes and earthy colour palettes to boost my creativity and help me develop my artworks. I started with sketching out each dog character on paper using google images as references for poses and gestures, then digitalised these sketches on my iPad, colouring them, exporting to After Effects and animating them.

Audio

The audio for Pawfee Please was produced by Peter Spence at SAE Institute.

Peter Spence created a very fun and upbeat audio track for this project and was an absolute delight to work with.

The desired brief given was jazz-style with latin music notes that relate to my personal heritage from Venezuela, South America.

Peter captured this amazingly and even added some comical dog barks to suit the canine theme, as well as cafe-inspired ambience noises.