What is the film about?

A commissioned documentary film about how, often, the closer we grow to someone, the less we want to sleep with them, and why this might be, and how we can go about fixing this to healthier relationships.

What influenced it?

Mid-century illustration, early Disney concept art, Sci-Fi art from the sixties and seventies, Eastern European fairytale illustration.

A little background information...

I was commissioned by The School Of Life to create an animation exploring intimacy and closeness in modern relationships.

It is a film about how, often, the closer we grow to someone, the less we want to sleep with them – and because of this I grew very interested in the idea of domesticity and interiors versus wildness and exteriors, and this became the predominant theme in the film.

Previously my practice drew from fairytale traditions (my undergraduate degree was Literature and Classics, not art), particularly retro fairytale illustration, and this definitely seeps into this film in the design of the exterior spaces; the domestic interiors, however, were new territory for me, and I really enjoyed exploring characters in a non-fantasy environment – a family home. I spent a great deal of time researching mid-century domestic illustration, and I think this informed the visuals I ended up creating.

I was given complete creative control over the visuals on the sole stipulation that they comply with Youtube’s explicit content guidelines – which actually proved to be very tricky for a film all about sex! So I chose to use an extended metaphor of penis- and vagina- plants for the visuals, which I think helped create a funny, irreverent tone and worked well in the domestic setting.

I’ve always been a fan of anything a bit strange and weird, so was keen to create memorable, cute and slightly uncanny characters, that almost seem human, but aren’t. They are not gendered, nor race-d,, which I think serves two purposes: to add to the slightly surreal, fairytale impression of the animated world of the film, and also to show that love, intimacy, closeness and domesticity transcend sex and gender roles. It was important to me that visuals inspired by mid-century domestic illustrations did not feature characters fulfilling mid-century domestic gender roles.

How was the film made?

The film was made entirely frame by frame in photoshop, with comping in After Effects.