Undabo Studios is proud to have completed a 16 Minute 3D animated film for Snow Patrol’s 2009 World Stadium Tour ‘Take Back the Cities’.

Working for small production company Atticus Finch, Undabo created a complex and intriguing short film inspired by origami artwork from the band’s latest album: ‘A Hundred Million Suns’.

Gary Lightbody, Snow Patrols Front man and songwriter, approached award-winning video director Blue Leach (Splinter Films) with the idea of using animation to add impact to their sixteen minute track ‘The Lightning Strike’ which would be used as the grand finale of each of their world tour shows.

Leach took the project to Atticus Finch to be developed into a working concept and Undabo were brought on board to develop the visual look and create the film. Incredibly, the animation was created in just nine weeks using Autodesk’s Softimage | XSI.

Undabo’s Doug Kennedy and Simon Brown worked around the clock creating over 24,000 frames of animation which would be projected onto an enormous 60 x 40 ft screen hung at the front of the stage for the first 6 minutes, before moving to massive LED screens suspended behind the band.

Atticus Finch’s Chris Richmond and Jim Waters worked closely with Undabo and Splinter Films, making sure both the Director, Blue Leach, and Snow Patrol were delighted with every aspect of the film.

Doug Kennedy, founder of Undabo Studios, shared his reflections on seeing the animation for the first time on the big screen:

He Said: “We watched our Animation play out on the last night of the London O2 Arena gigs. It was amazing to see thousands of people enjoying our hard work all at the same time.”

“We witnessed a sea of glowing white screens as people raised up their camera phones to record the animation. Obviously many of these videos found their way to You Tube where I ended up eagerly and obsessively reading all the really great comments people were writing about our film.”

The ‘Take Back the Cities’ tour has now completed its UK leg with outstanding reviews most of which specifically cite the animation finale. The tour travels to European, South African and Australian venues ahead of the 2009 festival season. The Snow Patrol Project has been a great opportunity for Undabo to work on large scale projects normally dominated by the big guns in the animation industry. In fact, as a smaller studio Undabo has found that since the economic downturn began to hit, we are in a good position to take on bigger and more interesting projects because we can be flexible and more cost effective than some of the larger studios.