The idea for the 2D cartoon figures came when a friend of mine, Matthias (aka Matti), told me he was going to marry his longtime girlfriend Shana and he wanted to do something very special.

Since Matthias is an avid gamer, he wanted to tell the story of how he met his girlfriend by means of a “game style” animation. As a reference he mentioned the classic “Mario Bros. Game”.

As The HeadQuarters, mostly constructing 3D models for animation, concept design for film and other graphical work, I came up with the 2D designs of both himself and his – soon to be wife, Shana and of course his loyal cat Luke (yes, named after Luke Skywalker).

Matthias is also a true zombie-fan! So the game style animation consisted of himself and Shana doing battle with zombies and taking on other challenges in order to get to the end of each “game” level. We had 6 levels in total, each lasting up to a minute. I must admit, time was slim, since I only had about four weeks to design and animate all levels. But, I managed to get everything ready, just in time for the wedding.

With the 2D design of Matti and Shana ready, I found the 1minime site on the internet. Realizing real models of the main characters would be the icing on the cake, it didn’t take long to contact 1minime with the question “can you model cartoon dolls?”, with the fantastic results as the answer:

This is the first time The HeadQuarters made a 2D cartoon game style animation and we’ve got the Matti&Shana dolls to back up that project! Thanks to 1Minime!

For those who would like to check the game style animation, just direct your browser to www.theheadquarters.be