Little Bird Signs CARAVAN Signs for East Coast Representation
September 2, 2026
CDs Filippo Martinelli and Riccardo Albertini lead the animation crew at Rocketpanda in crafting a steamy 2D/3D vignette of Mediterranean summer in their new feel-good short film Tango Calor.
From Rocketpanda: We wanted to make something fresh, in every sense of the word. The idea of setting an entire story inside a tiny 3D set was too good to pass up. We threw everything we had at it: 3D elements, cell animation, lines, weights, textures. All together into one small, strange, beautiful piece of mixed media.
Paloma, our hot character, does not do things by halves. She feels everything intensely. Including the heat. So every move she makes is both an expression and a dance step. A pose, a feeling, a tango all at once.
“We threw everything we had at it: 3D elements, cell animation, lines, weights, textures. All together into one small, strange, beautiful piece of mixed media.”
A huge part of the work lived in the lookdev of the scene props. The set, the plants, the curtains, the tiles. Every single detail is soaked in Mediterranean culture, deliberately scattered somewhere between southern Italy, Spain and Greece.
To get textures this good, we combined Blender and Substance Painter into one workflow. Full control over every single detail. The game was simple: real materials applied to simplified forms. The contrast between the two is where the magic lives.
We love Blender as a creative tool but this time we pushed it further. The entire animation was done in Grease Pencil, drawing directly inside the 3D set and keeping compositing to a minimum.
Production: Rocketpanda
CD: Filippo Martinelli, Riccardo Albertini
Art Director: Filippo Martinelli
Illustration: Federica Amico
3D: Filippo Martinelli, Federica Amico
Storyboard: L. Tomelleri
Animation: L. Tomelleri, Riccardo Pagano
Compositing: Filippo Martinelli, Andrea Nobis
Producer: Ilaria Gragnato
Music/sound design: H1 Sound
