Creator Shaddy Safadi Elucidates the Refined Points of His Annecy-Winning ‘Christo’ Series

Last month, an indie CG-animated series Christo: The Civilized Barbarian (“Hunting Party”) was the winner of the Annecy Cristal for best TV Series. Created by Shaddy Safadi, the creative director at Santa Monica, California-based studio One Pixel Brush, the show centers on a very civilized Barbarian who was born in the wrong century to the wrong clan. Averse to pillaging and fighting Christo tries and fails to bring “Romanesque” decency, decorum and cleanliness to the rest of his dim-witted family and friends. We caught up with Safadi to find out more about this animated barbarian and how he was able to beat the big studio contenders at Annecy!

Animation Magazine: Can you tell us a little about the origins of the series? What was the inspiration behind it?

Shaddy Safadi: It was an idea I first had in high school, I noticed that in video games the swords of baddie characters, including a barbarian character who didn’t like to fight, got bigger and bigger and I thought that idea of masculinity was funny and silly. I thought it was great as a one-off joke but as a side character I thought it could evolve.

On a deeper level, I think we live in a time where we’re seeing behaviors of people and leaders around the world that I would deem as being utterly insane, and I didn’t have a way to explain it until I read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari — he writes that our brains are 30-40,000 years old and in a lot of ways we haven’t evolved past Barbarian stage. The point of Christo is to point to that: the part of us that is now civilized, even though we’re largely still primitive in nature.

When did you actually start working on it and how long did it take?

I was quite insecure about writing so it took me a few years to get started and decide on which tools we’d use to make it. The main tools we used were Rokoko, Quick Magic, iClone and Character Creator. Using these tools is a really quick way to create animation — you can even use your iPhone with some of these tools. We didn’t create everything from scratch, which helped with the speed of our overall process. For instance, I bought a specialized character pack from Character Creator and tweaked and finalized them in Blender. We spent most of the time cleaning up the characters.

Can you discuss the visual style of the short?

The art style wasn’t top priority in all honesty, it was more about the storytelling and getting the idea out there quickly, for lower costs. A big reason for this was that I didn’t want to rely on external funding for this pilot, I just wanted to be independent, happy with the animation and just get it out there — I think the art style worked for the story and characters.

Arcane is one of the most beautiful animations I’ve ever seen, but it also cost over 250 million dollars. I didn’t want Christo to gather dust waiting for someone to put money behind it.

How did you raise the production funds? How much did it cost?

I paid for this with the money from my company, One Pixel Brush, which is a high-end concept art studio. It was still really expensive and it’s not like everyone could do it this way, but it was still drastically cheaper than if we went down the traditional route.

What are the future plans for the barbarians?

We’ll keep doing it! I have connections in all the big studios, but trying to get an animated short or film made is one of the hardest art things to do and I don’t think people can comprehend, or perhaps even care, that we’re revolutionizing animation right now, for less than $5,000 a minute. Studios are, quite rightly, being highly risk averse. Perhaps someone will see it and want to pick it up for a series or feature, or maybe not, but we’ll keep going because I enjoy the challenge.

What is your take on the broader animation climate in 2025?

I’m not really “in” animation — I’m super happy that Christo is out there and winning awards like Annecy, but right now it’s practically impossible to get something made, so sharing our process on Christo and how others can get their stories out there is exciting to me.

Any advice for animation newbies?

I can give advice if whoever is reading this is a creator or storyteller, which is to look at how we made Christo — there are lots of making of videos via our One Pixel Brush website and Christo socials. It’s a great way to make your own things, as the tools available are helping democratize animation and filmmaking, which I hope leads to more creativity and stories!

You can keep up with Christo through onepixelbrush.com as well as the show’s official Instagram.