frequently asked questions ~ preguntas frecuentes
Meanings of names
What does Karu Karu mean?
In Quechua, one of the Native South American language families, it means "very far away".
What does Miniambra mean?
Although Miniambra seems to relate to the root 'mini' (from the latin minuere, "reduce, diminish" -referring to something or someone small), it really has no connection to this.
Miniambra has a particular meaning in her own language, but she hasn't discovered it yet and she will later on in the story.
Style & techniques
What inspired those patterns?
Patterns are very important for the style of Miniambra. The tree's patterns were based in Latin American knitting and Colombian "mochilas". The patterns on the bridge are inspired in crochet knitting, a tradition amongst women in most families.
What drawing / painting techniques did you use?
We worked with digital painting (Photoshop) mainly, although the sky's pattern was created using watercolour stains on paper.
What animation techniques did you use?
Our characters were assembled and animated as 2D digital puppets in After Effects (using the amazing free tool DuIK by Nicolas Dufresne).
Our background elements were also animated in After Effects but most of them were either manually 'keyframed' or done through scripting (i.e. entering text based commands).
We'll provide some tutorials on all of this soon :)