What is the film about?

Lyric video to accompany Tom Rosenthal’s song ‘Future Holds’. Two girls travel through the world, not knowing what the Future Holds…

What influenced it?

I’m not sure if it is all that visible in the style, but it was an exhibition of Japanese prints at Bristol Museum that kick started this project. I was very excited to study how the artists drew hands and necks of the female characters, picking out the very slight folds in skin that appear at these angles. This kind of realistic detail set me off in my sketchbook trying to find characters that reflected this same love and attention to detail for their subjects. The main influence for the story was talking with Tom about his feelings about the lyrics and the message of the song, that could apply to lovers who never quite made it happen.

A little background information...

I was commissioned by Tom again, after working with him earlier this year on the music video for ‘How Have You Been’, to make a simple lyric video for this track. I chose to make it solely in 2D drawn animation as I only had 1 month to create something in.

How was the film made?

It was animated in TVPaint, using photos and scans of real textures to give it a sense of my preferred hand made style, whilst keeping the production fast. For example, the texture of the moon is a photograph of my bedroom wall, zoomed in as I liked how the air-bubbles looked a little like craters for the surface of the moon. Once I’d found the characters, the flow of their adventure was completely improvised, that ended up telling more of a story than I set out with. Kind of a big abstract female love story with a bitter sweet ending!