An animation created during my final year studying visual communication in Glasgow School of Art in 2009/2010. It is based on a short story by Karel Čapek How To Grow Clouds. The music was composed by Nick Scott.
Like Haiku poetry, I wanted the animation to focus on emphasizing the small details, to catch the fleeting moments and glorify the everyday actions of something as simple as the act of gardening.
After preparing some initial watercolour storyboards, I decided that I wanted the whole animation to envoke the feel of a 3d watercolour paint. In order to achieve this illusion of a Japanese watercolour, the base for everything (puppets, clothes, animals, scenography) had to be watercolour-friendly, white and needed to look like it was made from paper. Therefore, as my primary materials, I used plaster to cover wood and cardboard constructions, paper-mache and white fabric for the background.
I wanted my puppets to have a wide range of movement which would correspond to the fluidity of their environment, so after several trials with wood and wire, I choose to make my figures from metal armature with ball and socket joints from metal balls and bicycle chain parts. Even their hands had flexible fingers which allowed for a fluid transition from one frame to the next.
CONCEPT IMAGES
PROPS
SCREENSHOTS
