History of Swear Words • Netflix Series

Hosted by Nicholas Cage, History of Swear Words is a tongue in cheek comedy docu-series for Netflix that explores - you guessed it - the origins, meaning, and usage (both historical and modern) of our favorite swear words.

For a variety of comedy scenes wherein some of the stories behind these histories were satirized, we were tasked by the producers to design and animate cut-out style (a la Terry Gilliam) environments and animations.

In keeping with cut-out style design, we focused on using design elements that read as ‘organic’, ‘paper’, ‘paint’, ‘ink’. As a unifying measure to bring this feel home, we incorporated newspaper elements into each design. When it came time to design characters, we scoured Wikimedia Commons to gain, in almost all cases, historically accurate photos of our subjects that could be conformed to the cut-out style.

The result is a series of silly yet bizarrely gratifying animated comedy shorts. Please enjoy!