GERRY CINNAMON

When Sam Tozer and his team approached me to create the visuals for Kampfire Vampire, Gerry Cinnamon had one clear reference in mind: John Carpenter's They Live.

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The challenge wasn't to recreate the film. It was to translate its ideas into a completely different medium. The original explored hidden control through advertising and television. Our version looked at a different kind of influence: phones, endless scrolling, and the technology we willingly carry everywhere. The message felt just as relevant today. It had simply found a new disguise.

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Rather than borrowing the look of They Live, I imagined what its world might feel like if it had first existed as a graphic novel. I wanted the visuals to feel like a living comic book. We animated the entire film and then painted over every frame by hand, creating something that sat somewhere between illustration and animation while nudging the story into a more contemporary world.

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Designing for a live show is very different from making a film. Nothing stays on screen for long. Every image has to communicate instantly on enormous LED screens, so every frame was designed to be bold, graphic and immediate.

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We created the entire piece in just three weeks. It was one of those projects where instinct mattered more than perfection.

Looking back, I don't think we made a tribute to They Live. We translated its message into a different visual language for a different audience, at a different moment in time.