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A few months ago, we shared a nostalgic and intimate short film created by Keytales. The project is actually a proof of concept for an upcoming animated feature: Wildheart.
At annecy, we had the chance to chat with Keytales co-founder Matteo Paolini. We asked him about Wildheart, and Keytales’ plans to give life to this movie.
Here is the teaser, followed by the interview.
3DVF: Hello Matteo! You are the co-founder of Keytales, the studio behind Wildheart, an upcoming animated feature film. What can you tell us about it?
Matteo Paolini (Co-founder & Production Supervisor – Keytales): Hello 3DVF! Wildheart is a love letter to classic Japanese cinema.
And our story is, I guess, mainly about family. And the way family dynamics shifted throughout the Shōwa period in Japan.
We view this through the lens of different generations. We follow the main characters, two kids living on the streets, but there are also different characters who also have their struggles within their families. So this is a generational story, basically. Ths also means that Wildheart is for the whole family, not just for kids.
We chose to set the story in the 60s because this is a very nostalgic era. It was a time of change, for example when it comes to the media and the entertainment industry. People started thinking of the future again, and there was actually an expo in Japan that envisionned what that future could look like.
The whole mindset shifted around that period.
3DVF: Can you tell us about the funding, and why you attended the Annecy Festival?
We have a production partner already, who is supplying half of the funding that we need. On our end, we are basically funded, but anything that we would pay ourselves, we’ll do it once the film is done, to offset the cost. There is also some funding from private equity, on our end.
Basically, we are good to go, but we’re looking for additional partners to give us a bit of an extra cushion. Which is also why we attended the Annecy Festival. This was also a good opportunity to meet some people, figure out if there are opportunities do distribute the movie in specific territories.
Basically, since we’re still at an early stage, any partnership or collaboration is welcome.
3DVF: Keytales is a small company. How are you planning to work on the animation? Are you going to grow the team, or to partner with other studios?
Anything animation-related will be handled by our production partner, in Belgium.
And we’ll handle the rest: environement, designs, editing, compositing, and so on. And for that, we will adapt the crew based on the needs. And we’ll outsource whenever it is needed.
3DVF: Keytales was first and foremost a consulting company. Why did you began working on your own IPs ?
We started out mainly on creative consulting for various IPs. But ultimately, we figured out that we also wanted to explore our own stories. So, we have a whole bunch of IPs that we are working on. Wildheart being the one that is the most developed one, stil; in pre-production.
3DVF: Developing your own IPs is always a risky move, from a financial standpoint. You still have to make ends meet as a studio, while working on these projects.
Yes, but the good news is, we still have quite a bit of funding from the commission work we used to do.
We are pretty guerilla in terms of how we approach productions, this allows us to save on costs and just work on our own projects.
Obviously, this doesn’t come without any risks, so we still have to get it done, but we are confident in getting our projects to a good stage.
3DVF: Keytales is based in Paris, but the team is actually scattered around the world. How does this work on a day-to-day basis?
We handle basically everything remotely. I’m in Germany, my production partner and co-founder Marceau Nakayama switches back and forth between Japan and France. We founded the company together, and we both come from the gaming space, then transtitionned to concept art, design, towards film, before launching Keytales.
So far, working remotely has been working pretty well, we basically use the same tools as everyone else, Google Drive, emails, Messenger, stuff like that.
3DVF: Can you tell us more about your work as a production supervisor ?
Right now, my role is quite flexible. My focus is getting the project going, getting everything started. I do the scheduling, I have to map out our schedule for the next… Probably one or two years, to make this animated feature! I also work on assembling the crew, reaching out to people,
But I also come from an artistic background, so at some point I’ll also dive in and help with the project, if there is less workload on the production side.
3DVF: You launched the teaser a few months ago. How good has been the reception by the animation industry and animation lovers?
We didn’t really have anything out there, so we weren’t expecting anything. So fare, we’ve reached more than 10 000 views, which is more than we anticipated. We also setup a Discord community, an Instagram account and so on. We had a lot of positive feedback, people feeling some kind of connection with Wildheart. And this is exactly what we want to hear!
3DVF: Thanks, Matteo! We’ll keep following Wildheart closely.
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We also invite our readers to check out the official Keytales website : you’ll also find there some information about Umi, Exile, and Aidin, three other projects developped by Keytales. A few concept arts are available for each of them.
