PSYOP Signs Berlin Studio someform for U.S. representation
January 6, 2026
Berlin animation studio Woodblock continues to explore content creation outside the client realm (watch their Bye Bear short here) dropping the first episode of Space Probe Force, a new animated series premiering on YouTube.
Tom Weber, director co/founder at Woodblock: “Space Probe Force is what happens when humans conquer the universe — and the universe isn’t impressed. It’s weird, it’s sassy, and it’s unapologetically chaotic.
“The creation of the first episode ‘Gravity Push’ started as a sketch which became a 15-second animatic depicting astronauts emerging from a spaceship on a planet with very high gravity and one of the them attempting a push-up. From this moment, we knew we wanted to make a full pilot episode.
“‘Space Probe Force’ is what happens when humans conquer the universe — and the universe isn’t impressed.”
“Animation typically follows a proven workflow: script → storyboard → animatic → previs → animate. We ignored this approach, which ultimately became the main creative challenge. Instead, we went from animatic straight into animating a full-blown episode, adjusting the script as we went along.
“The challenges of the creative process translated directly into the technical complexities. Our original idea was to make each episode in one shot with no edits and just one camera. This required one sole animator to work on it and therefore many months to produce.
“Once we reviewed that initial result, we asked ourselves, ‘What would this look like if we included additional camera perspectives and further edits?’. Following these processes, the episode worked better and we split it into shots, edited, and rendered it.”
Production: Woodblock
Concept/Director: Tom Weber, Ilija Brunck
Designer: Tom Weber
Producer: Ilija Brunck
Additional Design: Helen Choi, Janos Gerasch, Benjamin Broschinski
Character Modeling: Marko Hakenjos
Character Texturing: Roman Hinkel
Rigging: Ilija Brunck, Marko Kowalik
Character Animation: Ringo Klapschinsky
Pipeline: Michael Heberlein, Jack Perkins
Effects Animation 3D: Felix Gebhardt, Fabian Pross
Effects Animation 2D: Kim Nguyen
Shading/Lighting/Compositing: Thorsten Löffler, Jan Bitzer, Paul Schicketanz, Sarah Eim, Csaba Letay
Logo Design: Diana Toro, Diego Morales
Production: Jona Brunck, Selina Schmitt, Konrad Weser, Janina Lipp, Anna Pross
Audio Studio: Tro
Producer: Jan Kranz
Music: Alexis Troy
Music Supervisor: Matteo Ponzetta
Sound Design: Bastian Kohler
Special Thanks: Holger Jäckle
