Artist Spotlight: Cossette, Rodeo FX, and See Creature capture workplace stress

The multi-category-winning (MCW) animation Hanging by a Thread, created by Cossette with Rodeo FX and See Creature for the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), captures the quiet unraveling of workplace stress. A still from the film graces the Winter 2025 cover of Applied Arts—now in the mail—while Richard Rochette-Villeneuve, Cossette’s VP and Creative Director, and Dale Hayward, Co-Founder of See Creature and Co-Director, give a behind-the-scenes look at the award-winning process.

How did your collaboration work during the evolution of this campaign?

Cossette wrote the script and had partnered with Rodeo FX to create the film, and as it happened, the concept was to use real stop-motion characters, so Rodeo came to us (See Creature) to bring it to life. Since Rodeo and Cossette weren't familiar with stop motion, I co-directed the spot with Pierre Dalpé from Rodeo FX, and the See Creature team made sure to create daily touchpoints with the agency and producers so any decision was confirmed before moving forward. 

A unique stage of See Creature stop-motion pipeline is called the Photomatic. It's a stage that bridges the gap between the drawings of an animatic and the physical reality of stop-motion, much like a previs. We took the puppets and sets at whatever stage they're in (usually cardboard mockups) and framed every shot of the film with the real camera and lenses. We brought the key team members from Cossette and Rodeo FX into the studio and we captured an image or two of every shot and then placed them into the edit. This is a great stage for everyone to express their vision and compare it to the physicality of stop-motion. The photomatic prevents a lot of assumptions and fear that can brew during the production, and prevents so many reshoots. 

A big misconception about stop motion is that you can't revise, and that is true if the revision is at the wrong time. Our goal is to keep the communication as open as possible, so our team can be agile and make revisions when the time is right and disrupt the production as little as possible. We were very fortunate to partner with creatives who trusted us and knew stop-motion was the best choice for this project.

The Cossette team ensured CNESST clients were kept in the loop at every stage.

What was the time period from start to finish?

The production was 12 weeks from storyboards to final delivery. The entire creative process had started another 3 months before that. 

Were you both client-facing during the creative process?

Cossette and Rodeo FX were client-facing.

Can you walk us through the specifics of creating this piece together? 

Since the concept had been tested in research first, Cossette provided See Creature with a script, a preliminary storyboard and some visual concepts. After discussing the scope of work and what the ultimate goals were of the project, we moved on to the official storyboard/animatic stage. We find getting the boards into an edit as soon as possible with an animatic is the most efficient way to understand the timing and pacing of the film because in animation, we edit at the beginning of the process and the animatic is our foundation for the whole piece. Nailing the animatic is a very important milestone and is worth spending the extra time on. 

Then we created the designs for the characters, sets and props. The concept of the film relied heavily on using real crochet characters, so our design and puppet fabrication teams needed to closely communicate to take into consideration the challenges of crocheting at that scale and to make the characters animatable as well. While the fabrication stage was happening, we brought the lead team members into the studio to create the photomatic, which gives us another version of the edit. Animation is an iterative process and by creating feedback milestones allows for the whole team to express their thoughts at the right times.

Even though we deal in reality, Stop motion is always a blend between the old and new, we still involve technology into the pipeline as much as possible. Using 3d printed office props and working closely with Rodeo FX's top-tier visual effects team allowed us to create a big production feel with a small team. We even implemented a few old-school camera tricks, like a fake mirror to make sure the audience was never distracted by the technique, but stayed engaged in the story. 

The animation stage took about 4 weeks and was animated in 2 studios at the same time by myself, Sylvie Trouvé and Laura Venditti. Most people think the animation takes a long time in stop motion, but compared to other techniques, it actually can be quite fast. No need to colour, clean or render in post; the scene is right there in front of you, all we have to do is move it one frame at a time. It's always invigorating to see people's reactions to the stop motion process, it reminds people of the movie magic that is so easy to take for granted especially when anything can happen these days with a few prompts. 

One of the advantages of stop motion is that we can shoot multiple exposure passes of the same animation. This gives the post-production team multiple options for compositing, lighting and effects. For example, the main unraveling shot of our main character was achieved with a combination of animating the complete puppet, matching that animation with a puppet "shell" that strategically unraveled and allowed us to see the empty inside of the head and then seamlessly combining it together in post-production.

What was the hardest part when you were creating this piece?

Working with real materials always presents challenges and crochet was no different because none of our team had experience with crochet. One of my favourite parts of working in stop motion is that we get to work with experts in niche artistic disciplines. We partnered with Chason Yeboah, an incredible crochet artist from Toronto to create our cast of 8 puppets. Our characters stand about 10 inch tall, so for the scale to work, we had to use a very fine thickness of yarn which also meant that Chason had to crochet around the armature of the puppet, so that made for some very tricky knitting. But the biggest stress was dealing with fast and efficient shipping of the puppets from Toronto back to Montreal. Ultimately, even with all thephysical challenges, the results of using real crochet gives a humanity to the film that accompanies the beautiful story that we can all relate to.

This team kicked it out of the park, and for an important cause!