What is the film about?

As the night comes, the journey begins. Running rushing, racing. Unbound from time and swept away by the night’s surreal ballet of lights, we leave day-life behind.

What influenced it?

Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, Walter Ruttman, Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Jonathan Shaw

A little background information...

The production company STINK Films approached 2D animation director Michelle Brand after they saw her film ‘Any Instant Whatever’, an abstract piece that discusses time and motion, as VONFELT was looking for a way how to visualise acceleration. In addition, Vonfelt was looking for imagery where you cannot tell dream and reality apart – this was the perfect opportunity to make use of some new techniques Michelle had been exploring together with 3D animation director Toby Auberg, as they were in the midst of setting up a 2Dx3D animation studio called Kinemus. Together, they crafted a hazy and mysterious style, where they could control how realistic scenes felt depending on the ratio of 3D versus 2D animation.

How was the film made?

Each shot was first designed in 2D, marking what and how many elements need to be created in 3D. After the initial 2D sketch, the needed elements, camera movements or scenes were modelled and animated in 3D. This 3D scene then was given back to the 2D animator, who painted over every frame, leaving only hints of the 3D models behind, changing the look of the scene entirely to be more hazy, abstracted and illustrative. This new imagery was then given back one final time to the world of 3D, where the image sequence was projected and fused back into the 3D scene, adding additional lights, blurs, glows and fog effects on top, merging everything into one complete image.

This inventive method of fusing 2D illustration and 3D space ultimately turns the mediums upside down: a projection of illustration in real space that, in addition to yielding unique effects, evokes a presence into our stylized world.