Jack Sachs takes us through his new intro sequence for The Wonderfully Weird World Of Gumball

When Jack Sachs suffered a serious injury to his hand during the final year of his illustration course at Camberwell, he had to think on his feet and find something new to do apart from his exclusively pen and paper style – that’s where his acclaimed career in graphic design and CGI began. Since those fateful days, Jack has brought his joyous characters to projects for Apple, Nike Kids, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and P!nk, and created wacky statues in Chengdu, China. (He was also one of our Ones to Watch, back in 2017!) Now, his latest triumph is a chaotic intro sequence, in collaboration with Studio Soi for Cartoon Network, for the highly anticipated upcoming season of the Gumball franchise, now retitled The Wonderfully Weird World Of Gumball, with a new logo designed by the man himself. For those who don’t know, Gumball is an artist’s heaven. Jam-packed with various art styles, every episode is a multimedia adventure, combining stop-motion, 3D, 2D, anime, collage, you name it. Naturally, this is where the multitalented Jack Sachs came in with his eclectic portfolio.

“For the last couple of years I’ve been working on this personal project that I’m calling ‘refreshments’ – which is basically an exploration in 3D scanning my surroundings and mixing in all different types of animation and graphics,” Jack tells It’s Nice That. “I’m not doing any fancy rendering.” Fitting Gumball’s rogue and explosive art style, Jack intended to allow the process to be visible in the final product – favouring rough renders in order to bake into the show’s scrappy style. It’s as if every character and environmental asset came from the messy realm of a child’s imagination. Jack, whose hand healed over time, draws today inside of a virtual sculpting program called Medium, which allows him to design 3D assets with VR. The swiftness of the digital media meant he could have more freedom in the design as well as being able to feed in direct references from the show. After that, he could swing from app to app, squeezing the most creativity as he could out of Cinema4D, zbrush and Octane.

When it came to the challenge of creating a new intro sequence that stood out from the iconic original, Jack didn’t seem too fazed. Working with the theme song, the project had a kinetic rhythm that gave structure but also allowed tons of space for visual playfulness – however the real challenge came in the task of creating the wealth of assets needed for such a multimedia world. “Over the course of the project I made hundreds of versions of different assets,” said Jack. “We really wanted to lean into the different effects used in the show, and the word ‘tactile’ was thrown around a lot.” The tone was set with the new logo first, which features font design created from different materials, ranging from fuzzy to bubbly, representing the plethora of textiles in the world of Gumball. The editing of the sequence is sublime, slushing from scene to scene with datamoshed pixels and orgies of animation techniques.

It’s been six years since the last Gumball season aired, so this new season really means a lot to fans, and Jack. “I had moments where I was pretty nervous that the community would be upset with the change but I trusted the team I was working with and also in my own creative instincts,” says Jack. Aided by assistant director Joe Sparrow, Erik Fountain and show creator Benjamin Bocquelet, Jack felt more confident that their shared vision was one that the fans would love. With the new intro’s acclaim and fan excitement, it’s needless to say that this is another success under Jack’s professional belt, proving him to be one of the most forward-thinking animators working today.