Man's Best Friend
Sony Pictures Animation
A prehistoric buddy comedy.
Hired as a co-writer and director to develop a feature film with Sony Pictures Animation, Jon Saunders worked with a wide variety of artists to build a world that was dangerous yet playfully appealing, grounded in reality yet otherworldly.
Although the project was ultimately shelved after Sony Pictures released a live-action film with the same premise, the work illustrates the breadth of research and exploration undertaken to bring the characters, world, and themes of the story to life.
Character extremes
As is the case with all feature films, the story went through many iterations, from quiet and realistic depictions of this ancient period to the goofy and extreme.
With each shift in tone and plot came a new approach to how the characters best fit the world. Jon and a team of globally renowned character designers adapted their thinking accordingly, ranging from characters rooted in wardrobe realism to proportions pushed to absurdist levels.
For the main wolf character, Wolfie, the aim was always clear: create the cutest, most rambunctious dog ever depicted in film.
Simple worlds, complex thought.
This was a story about evolution. How two characters change, and how that change ripples outward to transform all of Man and Wolf.
We wanted the world to begin as a simpler place: chunky, controlled geometric forms that nonetheless held a variety of textures to draw you into the environments. As the story would unfold, and our characters grow, so would the environments, giving way to more complex and combined forms - reflecting the relationship of the two heroes.
Those broader shapes also served the comedy. Yes, they made the world feel sharp and dangerous, but they also kept it playful, skewed just enough to give us comedic liberties without pulling the viewer out of the experience.
A Story in a Still Life
By sculpting personality directly into the model, we ensured the character's essence was baked in from the start, rather than being an afterthought for the animators.
We asked critical story-driven questions during the sculpt: How does a younger version of this star stand? What is their attitude? Posing the sculpt helped us answer these questions. This iterative, sculpt-first process proved that a character's narrative begins long before the first frame of animation—it starts the moment you begin to sculpt.
● Creative Director / Christian Mills ● Character Design / Sergey Kolesov
● Charecter Sculpt / Marco Hakenjos / Mattias Bjurstrom
