Lorenz Wunderle talks deep on his award winning animation COYOTE

Lorenz Wunderle director of Coyote

indieactivity: Give a background of your personal experience with the story, writing, production and marketing
Lorenz Wunderle: I was inspired from so many TV animations, movies or comics from my childhood. I grew up with a lot of hollywood action movies from the late 90’s that were all about good versus evil, betrayal, vengeance and violence. And I loved the Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry as a kid ( I still do today ). So fictional violence on TV was for me fascinating and I got used to it. Although Tom and Jerry didn’t include bloody violence, they were still hurting each other in a funny and entertaining way.

But I remember, when I watched Ghost in the Shell in the 90’s where a Guy got his head blown off from a gunshot, I was shocked. I didn’t think that you could do that to a cartoon character.

Lorenz Wunderle’s award-winning animation “Coyote” showing at LA Film Festival

So it was a revealing moment for me. After that I was more into Animations or Anime for an adult audience like The Simpsons, South Park, Akira, Happy Tree Friends, The Ren & Stimpy Show, or some of the Adult Swim stuff like Superjail and so on…In the process of developing the story COYOTE, I was drawing a lot of storybits and thumbnails. I think I saw the story in my head more visually and it was easier to translate it on to paper instead of writing and describing my images down, so that others would understand my ideas and what I wanted to tell.
It took a little while to find a producer that fits to my taste of COYOTE. And a friend was telling me that YK Animation Studio were interested to produce animation short movies that were not coming from their team. So I knocked on their door, showed them my storyboard and my “fake teaser” for Coyote and after that we decided to work together.

I was happy to get my talented friends on board of the animation team and we had a lot of fun on creating and animating the scenes. Also I was lucky to have a Background Artist, that has the same sense of humour. We were hiding some things and inside jokes in the Background, especially in the bar and toilet scenes.

indieactivity: Did you start writing with a cast (You or any) in mind?
Lorenz Wunderle: So my interest was to create a character that is getting pushed aggressively into a corner, that he only could break out with violence. So his violent action in the story should be a cathartic moment. And I was also fascinated about mythological figures or religions like voodoo or Santeria, that are about existing parallel worlds. So I created this demon that wants to make a deal with the coyote and pushes him also to the violent action in a world that the coyote could physically and mentally do.

indieactivity: How long did you take to complete the script? (Do you have a writing process?)
Lorenz Wunderle: I was drawing the script and it took me about 2 years but not every day. I stepped sometime away from my COYOTE project and I was working on other animation shorts as an animator. So it felt good to get from time to time some distance from my idea, so I had always a fresh approach to create or manipulate on my story. So that’s why it took so long and also because I felt I was not in a hurry.

indieactivity: When did you form your production company and what was the original motivation for its formation?
Lorenz Wunderle: I was not one of the “founding fathers” of YK Animation Studio. But when I heard that they were producing animation shorts, I thought that those guys would like COYOTE and that they’re totally into that cartoon style. So I went knocking on their door, because I could not think of an other producer in Switzerland that was into my taste of cartoons.

indieactivity: What was the first project out of the gate?
Lorenz Wunderle: That was my first animation short after my graduation

indieactivity: During production, what scene (that made the cut) was the hardest to shoot?
Lorenz Wunderle: There was no “the hardest shot” in this short, I think there were some challenging scenes in the sense of drawing the animation and let it look cool. So for every one (including me) in the animation team, there was a shot to animate, that was challenging for them and they totally managed it, like “first class quality”.

indieactivity: You produced and directed the film, what measure of input did it take to don these hats?
Lorenz Wunderle: A lot of discipline. I was somehow obliged to my teammates to deliver the key-animation so they could work on the in-betweens. I did key-animation for the first time because normally, I was getting key frames or I did the whole animation by myself. But it was fun to do and I learned a lot. We were also very open for feedbacks to each other in the studio. It was also luxurious to have my mind just on the artistic process, while Ramon, Lukas and Joder were doing the financing thing for the short movie.

indieactivity: Is there anything about the independent filmmaking business you still struggle with?
Lorenz Wunderle: In my view not much in case of doing short animation movies. We are in Switzerland strongly dependent on cultural state fundings, what I think is great. But I think it’s harder to make a feature-length animation movie or a series only in switzerland. So in this cases we are depending on co-production with other countries.

indieactivity: Where do you think your strengths line as a filmmaker?
Lorenz Wunderle: I’m influenced from watching a lot of cartoons and so my thoughts are mostly in images that can be easily translated in animation. In other way I feel that in animation or illustration, I’m able to express my thoughts more freely to the outside, then in other technics. I don’t feel limited to create new worlds or characters till now. I’m a self-critic, also very open to feedbacks from others but also slowly aware of my confidence, what my style and taste is and how I would like to design or tell my stories.

indieactivity: Let’s talk finance, How did you finance the film?
Lorenz Wunderle: Through state fundings.

indieactivity: How much did you go over budget? How did you manage it?
Lorenz Wunderle: Well, there was a moment where we had to ask for more money, because the animation style needed more funding than we expected. But everything went smoothly and during the time we stopped the production, I was able to write the lyric for the country song, that we hear in the short.

indieactivity: How important is marketing? Do you think a project can make any dent without it these days?
Lorenz Wunderle: I would quote my producer Ramon, I got for that the same thought.

indieactivity: Can you tell us about your marketing activities on the project and how it s gone for you?
Lorenz Wunderle: It’s doing very well for COYOTE and for us at YK Animation Studio. COYOTE is making a lot of attentions around the world and won 4 Festival Awards. I never thought during the production that COYOTE would have this much success. I had so much fun in the process of doing my short and now I’m just feeling happy when I’m meeting other people and fans through my work.

indieactivity: What do you hope audiences get from your film?
Lorenz Wunderle: I hope that the audience is inspired and entertained. I hope that the audience will understand how humans could grief, get crazy and possessed by evil thoughts and if violence and revenge is the way of getting over the loss, or a beginning of an other circle of revenge and violence that maybe will never find an end. Although the topic could be taken seriously, I think the Audience will not be morally bummed out at the end of the short movie.

indieactivity: What else have you got in the works?
Lorenz Wunderle: YK Studio is pretty busy with coming new animation shorts and I’m mostly assisting the projects in storyboarding, character design or animation. But in my main focus now would be to trying develop an idea for an animation series. I’m hoping that I’m able to show something at the end of this year.

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