PepperMelon
By perrin
Meet Fernando Sarmiento and Tomas Garcia, head directors of PepperMelon, a motion graphics studio in Buenos Aires. Their careers took off when MTV saw their reel, which included a fake MTV spec. Years later, MTV is still one of their major clients, along with NIKE, VH-1, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Lionsgate. They’re known for their playful, sometimes scary, dreamlike style, which often includes animals: stuffed or animated, falling or floating, but always in motion.
What were you doing before?
F: Working at a strip club.
T: Visiting strips clubs.
How did you meet?
T: I gave Fernando a good tip at the strip club.
How did you get started in film and commercial productions?
F: I think we all taught ourselves here. There is no actual motion graphics or good animation schools here in Argentina. There might be some today, but there weren’t when we were younger. So most was self taught. Although I did go to film school, to drop out two years later. I was just too eager and excited to start working and stop theorizing Citizen Kane!
T: In reality, we’re just a few nerds that have lived all our youth surrounded by video games and cartoons. Something had to come out of all that. Now, finally, we can say that all that time dedicated to watching TV or waiting for a Commodore 64 cartridge to kick in was worth something.
What’s the story behind the name PepperMelon?
F: The story behind the PepperMelon name is a bit stupid… My last name is Sarmiento, which rhymes with “pimiento.” Pimiento in English means pepper. Tomas’ last name is Garcia, which rhymes with “sandia.” Sandia in English is melon. So, that’s the story! I’m pepper, and Tomas is melon.
When did you decide to start the studio?
F: I think that Tomas saw what he was missing in himself in me, and the other way around. Although I’m much better than him. That’s why Pepper is in front of Melon.
T: We wanted to make an animation/design studio that wouldn’t seek to get rich from one minute to the next, nor have two-thousand employees. We want to do what we like most and what fits us best, and have the necessary resources and tools to do it. I think I’ll be able to implement this in my next enterprise: MelonPepper.
Where in Buenos Aires is your studio located?
F: We’re in the capital, in a neighborhood called Villa Crespo. It’s a really urban area.
T: It’s really funny because we’re in the second floor of a building that’s generally rented for conferences and stuff, about health, literature, and it’s even rented now and then for Bar Mitzvahs and weddings! So PepperMelon is a real happy, party place.
You’ve worked for a number of large companies and use varying platforms: 3-D animation, illustration, stuffed animals, etc. How do you decide what you will use for each client? Can you describe your creative process?
T: We like making really different things all the time. All the same, it depends on what the client is looking for. When I make a concept I like taking everything to the next step compared to what we’ve made before. The creative process is quite chaotic. I think of various ideas, Fernando thinks of others, and then we make a pie war with the ideas with the whole team, and see where we go from there.
Your work has a very surreal approach. Do you consciously make your work dreamlike?
T: We don’t actually do it on purpose. The reality is that a dreamlike situation is an excellent space where we can invent our own rules and give form to the material we want to produce. These days we’re trying to achieve work with a minimum of abstraction as a challenge for us to produce new different things.
Do you consider yourselves part of an artistic scene? Are there other contemporary artists you feel share a similar outlook as your own?
T: When you grow little by little it’s difficult to evaluate in what place you’re really standing in terms of an artistic scene. One considers him/herself part of an artistic scene when he/she starts to see that fellow peers are recognizing one’s work. These days, there’s a lot of resurgent small design/animation enterprises that are rising and making their way into the business that we would love to emulate, such as Pandapanther, againstallodds, Pistachios, etc. Everyday we’re looking for artists that influence our work. We of course have our favorites, but generally, in an almost ritualistic way, we visit Newstoday, Motionographer, cpluv, and designiskinky daily.
F: We love to see Motionographer to see what’s the latest in motion and design. But also we find most of our inspiration in movies. We don’t just want to produce material that looks OK or that has an edge in design. We like to approach most of our jobs in a narrative and conceptual way. If you’re not actually communicating something to the “audience” receiving the “message,”
then one sort of loses interest. Doesn’t matter how great it might look or how awesome the production behind the work is. You don’t need millions to get someone’s attention. You need an idea.
Specifically, what inspired “I’m Cloud” for MTV? Is there a story behind it?
T: We had to create a piece that wasn’t complex, narration-wise, to be a mood in itself, almost hypnotic. I found inspiration for these in nature. We created a world with physics and logic where animals made out of geometric, inorganic elements wanted to be clouds. What we then did was capture the reality of it with real camera movement (tracked from real shots made with a DV camera). We wanted to transmit peace and harmony.
What are your future plans for PepperMelon?
F: PepperMelon began as a small studio producing animation and offering art direction and direction for commercials and live action. But our main focus for the future would be, some way or another, producing properties, our own content, be that series or films. We don’t know yet. It’s a real long, long, long process, we know, but we believe that every long journey begins with
the first step. So we hope we’re going into the right direction.
T: We are currently working on various animated projects to try to insert PepperMelon in television with our own properties. Plus, personally, I would love to rotate the logo so it reads MelonPepper.
