Gisborne's Charlie Faulks has completed an animated series Bloke of the Apocalypse. He is pictured with animator Jackson Davis. Photo / Sara Tansy
Gisborne's Charlie Faulks has completed an animated series Bloke of the Apocalypse. He is pictured with animator Jackson Davis. Photo / Sara Tansy
A long-held ambition to produce an animation for the screen will be fulfilled today when Charlie Faulks’ animated series Bloke of the Apocalypse has its premiere at the Terror-Fi Film Festival in Wellington.
Gisborne born-and-bred, Faulks (21) said he was feeling both excited and nervous ahead of the premiere.
“Itfeels quite surreal – all my family are coming for it, so I’m looking forward to seeing everyone,” he said.
“We’re very proud of it. At the moment it has only been seen by the team, so it’ll be great to see it on the big screen in front of an audience.”
Faulks grew up on a lifestyle block in Makaraka, Gisborne and attended Gisborne Boys’ High School.
He has always loved cartoons like Scooby Doo and the Loony Tunes productions, and started by drawing at a young age.
Bloke of the Apocalypse (BOTA) is set in the backblocks of New Zealand, where a father, Bloke, and son, Oliver, battle a zombie apocalypse and some annoying neighbours, all while taking care of their pet lamb, Lambie, and zombified mum, Julie.
BOTA takes inspiration from Faulks’ rural background, his quirky family and a pandemic.
Faulks met producers Ben Powdrell and Francesca Carney at an animation event a few years ago; they got behind the project early and helped him to secure NZ On Air funding.
He was in his second year of university and had already completed three episodes of BOTA when he submitted his pitch.
One of his favourite parts of the process has been crafting the story and presenting the script to the voice actors.
“Having that first read-through where we all sat around the table with the first drafts of the scripts was pretty satisfying,” he said.
“Essentially, it was created in a vacuum, so it was really nice to bring it into the room and just present it.”
NZ On Air granted him just under $500,000 of funding when he was 19 to create the show as part of their $5 million investment in new content for young New Zealanders.
“We’ve had a very clear budget from the get-go with money allocated to all of the different production costs.”
It took 10 months to create, using hand-drawn animation done on an iPad app called ToonSquid. Made in a frame-by-frame process entirely in iOS, each shot and scene was animated in a different file and eventually compiled in video editing software Davinci Resolve.
“We’ve kept it very local in Wellington and have had the budget to hire people like Kiwi composer Mike Newport,” Faulks said.
“We also now have an executive producer, Kate Goodwin, who is wonderful. It’s so expensive to make an animation and takes so long.”
Every frame of Charlie Faulks' animated series has been hand-drawn, first on paper and then on iPads. Photo / Sara Tansy
Bloke of the Apocalypse was completed while Faulks was studying at Massey University for a Bachelor of Screen Arts, majoring in animation.
He graduated this year and currently lives in Wellington.
The story follows Bloke and his son Oliver who live a peaceful rural life until it goes to zombified hell when the Wenze virus makes its way to the farm. Accompanied by Lambie and Julie, they have to survive the zombie apocalypse and each other to save their not-so-nuclear family.
“I was a huge fan of Footrot Flats as a kid and I recently watched A Dog’s Tale at the Wellington Animation Film Festival. It was amazing to see it on the big screen and the similarities [to BOTA] struck me – they are both set on a farm and share the same DNA.”
Bloke of the Apocalypse is an animated series comprising six episodes. The result of hours of sketching, animating, scripting and voicing, the series took 10 months to make with the help of funding from NZ On Air.
Faulks is a voice actor in the show alongside friends, family and well-known faces including Anika Moa and Theo Shakes. His best friend Jack Marlin voices Bloke; the two met in halls of residence while studying in Wellington.
These days, Faulks loves to create caricatures of everyone from Donald Trump to the characters in The White Lotus TV series, as seen on his social media pages @faulksie.
He has just been signed by management company The Gotham Group in New York.
“You need someone championing you like that, especially when you’re in New Zealand, so they’re helping get eyes on my stuff overseas.
“So that will hopefully broaden my horizons. But I still really love creating stuff here.
“I feel too spoiled at this point,” he said.
Bloke of the Apocalypse will be shown on the big screen at The Roxy in Miramar tonight. It will be released on YouTube on Friday.
Gisborne animator Charlie Faulks draws the main character in his web-series – a guy called Bloke. Photo / Sara Tansy
Animator Charlie Faulks is adept at drawing the main characters Bloke and Oliver in his animated series Bloke of the Apocalypse. He has always loved drawing cartoons and was obsessed with Scooby Doo and the Loony Tunes productions as a kid. Photo / Sara Tansy
