Impact

As Masonry Studios had built a strong foundation in commercial realism over the years, an opportunity to explore non-photorealistic rendering emerged unexpectedly during early experimentation. What began as a simple stylistic test revealed a different direction for the studio’s imagery, moving away from conventional photoreal workflows and toward a more expressive, authored visual language.

During this phase, I reworked one of the studio’s commercial shots into a non-photorealistic direction, using it as a way to test how far the studio’s look could shift when interpretation and texture were prioritised over realism. That experiment became the starting point for a broader internal study.

What followed was a focused effort to expand this approach into a fully realised animated film, pushing Masonry’s NPR capabilities across character, environment, and motion. The intention was not to replicate reality, but to build a system where every frame carried intention, rhythm, and a sense of drawn presence.