“Get your decaying flesh form in hot shape” with Fitness Z0ne by Jack Sachs

Date
4 December 2017

Just under a year ago, we named animator and illustrator Jack Sachs one of our Ones to Watch 2017 and it’s safe to say Jack did not disappoint. He’s spent the year expanding his already impressive portfolio to one that now includes clients like The New Yorker, Spotify and Nickelodeon.

Working between Berlin and London throughout the year, he has recently finished co-editing a TV commercial with Chris Bristow at Blink, where he is now a freelance director. “Working back-and-forth between Berlin and London has given me the space to do less commercial jobs and focus on personal things/technical 3D stuff/drawings etc which has been great. I’m working on a more relaxed approach to freelancing,” he explains.

A recent project sees Jack creating a “fitness tape to get your decaying flesh form in HOT SHAPE”. The animated short entitled Fitness Z0ne, features a host of Jack’s distinctive characters all partaking in ridiculously hilarious aerobics. The film was exhibited as part of Game Show on Saturday (2 December), a group show including illustrators Jack Taylor, Jay Wright, Zebu, Ori Jauch and Jack, largely organised by Dan Clarke.

As the concept behind Game Show is to present work that visitors can “physically get involved with, manipulate or move with,” Jack’s piece functions as an actual exercise video. “Obviously it goes off track and you can’t actually follow them but at the beginning you’re meant to try! It’s kind of a dumb joke really,” he tells It’s Nice That.

“I really wanted to make a short film for the show and I was speaking to Dan about the best way to make an interactive film, without the technical constraints of building and showing a video game. We began to think about a video that demanded things from the viewer and a fitness video seemed perfect,” Jack says. As well as aligning with the theme of the exhibition, Fitness Z0ne also provided him with the chance to put into practice a lot of techniques he’s recently learnt concerning 3D character animation.

In terms of how he conceptualised the absurd movements: “I started out with a rough idea of the kinds of moves I wanted to animate but with a lot of them I would build the rigs and then just mess around until I found something hat made me laugh.” Personal favourites of ours include “advance” and “earth jumps”, however, Jack’s more into the “angry bees man…because I’m scared of bees".

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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Jack Sachs: Fitness Z0ne

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About the Author

Ruby Boddington

Ruby joined the It’s Nice That team as an editorial assistant in September 2017 after graduating from the Graphic Communication Design course at Central Saint Martins. In April 2018, she became a staff writer and in August 2019, she was made associate editor.

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