Behind the Scenes: Q&A with LOBO, the Animators of 'Número 10'
The animators discuss their "labor of love" in sharing Lionel Messi's story
Messi
Mastercard recently collaborated with the animation group LOBO to create the short animated film "Número 10," featuring football icon Lionel Messi. Mastercard sat down with "Número 10"'s directors (including LOBO founder Mateus de Paula Santos, Tiago Marcondes, Diogo Kalil) to discuss the film's creative process, inspiration, and animation techniques.
What was the inspiration behind the animation style and concept for this ad?
We set out to create something bold—an aesthetic as committed and passionate as the culture that raised him. In Latin America, football isn't a pastime, it's an identity. It's ink on paper, black and white, all or nothing. That intensity inspired our visual world. We wanted the style to feel like a memory sketched by emotion—unpolished in a beautiful way, raw like the streets where so many legends begin.
How did you incorporate Lionel Messi's persona and brand into the animation?
Messi's story isn't just about greatness—it's about evolution. We translated that visually. His quiet strength and introverted nature gave the piece its rhythm: patient, grounded, reflective. His haircuts became narrative cues—subtle time stamps only true fans would catch. As he matured, we leaned into tattoos and finer details to carry the weight of his journey. And through it all, we used the brand's color language as both a storyteller and emotional highlighter, adding bursts of vibrancy in the moments that mattered most.
Can you walk us through the creative process from initial concept to final animation?
Concept The idea first took shape in the pitch phase, when we had creative freedom to explore. That's when the black-and-white world emerged—deep, textured, and rooted in Latin football culture. After the pitch, we expanded that vision into a full narrative arc, producing over 60 pieces of concept art that became the backbone of the story.
Animatic This stage was all about rhythm and emotion—turning stills into cinema. The animatic let us experiment with pacing, camera moves, and transitions that amplified each moment. It became the emotional blueprint for the animators, a reference that preserved timing and flow down to the frame.
2D Animation Here's where the soul of the film came alive. Everything was animated frame by frame—each gesture, blink, and step drawn by hand. We started rough, focusing on movement and character energy, then refined with multiple passes, layering nuance and clarity until the characters felt alive.
Post Post was our moment to reveal the story as we always imagined it. Until then, it was scaffolding—sketches, rough comps, placeholders. Here, we applied our custom ink-render technique, developed in-house, and added subtle compositing touches to elevate the emotion and bring a tactile, handcrafted finish to the piece.
Were there any specific techniques or effects that were particularly important for this project?
Yes—achieving the ink-on-paper aesthetic with full frame-by-frame animation was no small task. We developed a custom tool that allowed our animators to work with their preferred brushes while applying a diffusion-based rendering pass that mimicked the flow and texture of real ink. It was a labor of love—balancing artistic integrity with technical finesse—but the emotional impact it brought to the final frames made it worth every extra layer.
What aspects of Messi's real-life movements and expressions did you focus on capturing?
We paid close attention to Messi's physicality—especially his iconic left foot. In key moments, it was important that he moved the way he moves in real life: grounded, economical, precise. His personality also shaped our choices—we avoided over-animating. His humility and quiet confidence were best expressed through restraint. In a world that often celebrates flash, we found power in understatement—just like him.
