Hiroyasu Ishida, co-founder of Studio Colorido, has built a career based on the innocence and wonder of childhood. From independent short films to features like Penguin Highway and Drifting Home, his hallmark is fluid, dynamic animation that blends the fantastical with children's reality. There's no trick: only worlds that slip through the cracks of everyday life.
How Ishida's 2D animation challenges the rigidity of today's software 🎨
Ishida's visual fluidity is not magic, but meticulous technical work. Studio Colorido combines traditional 2D animation with digital tools to achieve movements that seem to skip keyframes. In Drifting Home, for example, transitions between the real and the dreamlike rely on nearly invisible rigging and a camera choreography that demands layered rendering. There are no shortcuts: each scene requires precise control of interpolation and timing so that childhood wonder is not broken.
The day Ishida tried to animate a penguin and almost melted the studio 🐧
They say that during Penguin Highway, the Colorido team was on the verge of declaring a strike because of a seven-second scene. Ishida wanted an ice penguin to slide down a slope while the background distorted like a fever dream. The result was that the interpolation software started generating strange legs and the render got stuck three times. In the end, an apprentice drew every frame by hand. The penguin turned out perfect; the apprentice, with tendonitis. That's childhood wonder: beautiful, but expensive.