Surviving the Race From Hell

Another entertaining short from Great Big Story. Some making-of details from the creators:

If you look at the early days of modern sports you’ll find a ton of buffoonery. Lax regulations led to all sorts of strange sports stories and the 1904 St. Louis marathon was no exception.

The story was so fertile with wacky shenanigans it was perfect for an animation dashed slapstick humor. We decided to create simple, yet expressive characters that were immediately identifiable and distinguishable so when shrunken down the audience would still know who they were looking at.

We also wanted to avoid doing time-consuming walk/run cycles and finding a solution to that was a great creative challenge. We hope you like the piece.