Collage animation

Brief

For this project, the brief was to create a digital collage with my own imagery or cutouts from old books, magazines and paper, and then to generate a short animation.

Approach

For some extra challenge, I constrained myself to the materials available in the pile, rather than work with my own images because I wanted to see what ideas I could generate from limited options. The old books and magazines were National Geographics and encyclopaedias. There were a lot of insect drawings, underwater photography of sea life, and there was an assortment of old-timey folks in Victorian garb. When I came across a print of knitted wool texture, my mind went straight back to all the moths and butterflies that I’d flicked past in the pages of scientific drawings. Setting my iPhone up overhead, I created a series of still images that went through the motion of the moth creating a hole in the wool to let the baby out, and I turned these into an animated gif.

Outcome

I called my short film, I Made You an Escape Hatch. It’s a little bit of whimsy but it’s also about helping each other find our way back to the flights paths we’re meant to be on.

“Such a clever and playful animation. The moment the larger butterfly reveals the hole and the smaller one emerges is both surprising and charming, it adds a sense of curiosity and discovery. A fun, creative concept that’s been really well executed.”