Over a month, this animated film was created as part of the "The Future Is Here" theme of the Object Shorts director's camp.
I came up with the concept, and the plot, designed the characters, and did the animation.
Daniel supervised the editing, sound design, and camera setup.
The film won a prize at the annual Estonian Pöff Film Festival. This was the first time my animation was shown in a cinema!
The Idea
Old relations of new technologies / Subpersonalities of the digital world.
The story of the transformation of our technological part of life.
About how, due to our evolutionary limitations, we do not have time to adapt to the changes that we have created. And we approach new fictional phenomena with the old vision.
About how, due to our evolutionary limitations, we do not have time to adapt to the changes that we have created. And we approach new fictional phenomena with the old vision.
The typical love story is no longer recognizable as familiar.
This is a remake of my idea from 2018 in the animation form with an allegorical embellishment of the music videos' style. The dichotomy of the traditional: male predisposition to discover the world for innovation implementation inhibits feminine preservation as a configuration for creating patterned tangible.
The Plot
The sentimental intimacy of a couple expecting a child reveals to us the allegorical characters of the old and new Internet. Further, everything does not go according to plan, reminding us of the structure of the real modern world.
The animation shows references to such vestigial signs of modernity as the New Age - with retreat and rebirth. It was also not without initiations, post-truth, and pushing reality as the inevitable basis of Western functioning.
This storyboard presents the first version of the film - without the opening, which packs the film into shape, and without the denouement, which emphasizes the mystical secrecy of new phenomena for us.
Set Design
The crystallized meeting takes place in a labyrinth in the shape of a fingerprint - some ancient technology glorifying the sensory world.
The treatment ward with heroes is in the middle of nowhere. This is the realm of abstract ideas, so burning clouds are here as an oxymoron and to emphasize the abstractness of thought.
The treatment ward with heroes is in the middle of nowhere. This is the realm of abstract ideas, so burning clouds are here as an oxymoron and to emphasize the abstractness of thought.
Since the introduction plays on the production of a sitcom, a straightforwardly kind and closed space with signs of a small theater stage has been created.
The transcendence of initiation was shown by the mechanical transformations that hypnotize us so much, and by the signs of temple architecture.
I also wanted to make a reference to past biomechanical dreams. I used Cronenberg's Existence as a recognizable design.
It ends with my neighborhood being filmed to further connect the mythology to the now.
Characters
Sophie
A vessel for a new life.
This is the embodiment of the old internet and the time when everyone began to worry about losing their identity due to the layering of virtual images. It's also about our past vision of a future with robots, the fear of augmentation, and the uncanny valley.
Fictitious, fantasy augmentations are grotesquely mixed with existing hardware (hard drives, microcircuits, boards, processors). These details throw us back into our reality.
The meme pattern is a symbol of the old (what we have now) Internet.
Adam. After transformation - Forbidden Fruit
The image of the new virtuality does not have a clear form, because now digital technologies are more about space than personal. At first, it is a ball, like an inverted world in the “Inhabited Island” by the Strugatsky brothers. With recognizable hands from the Oculus Quest VR headset.
The hero, accustomed to facing the unknown, gives in to an event that is natural for others. The rules of nature of the digital world help him complete the process in a different way with conscious participation. He turns into a function and connects with the child he rejected to create a new kind of conductor.
I was inspired by the lack of species logic among the angels of the Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The head is an omnivorous mouth filled with garbage knowledge. This absorption function is equipped with wings with cut-eyes originating from its organ of expression.
At the same time, he has a bare, unprotected back, indicating an imbalance of development and conservation, which will later play a negative role in his history.
The only thing that reminds us of his masculinity is the chopper steering wheel, which no longer carries any useful function other than a symbolic one, which in the world of technology is more important than mechanistic ones.
From the 2018 concept, where he was depicted as Peter the Great, the shape remains in the form of a cocked hat.
The first concept focused on the character's self-looping in pain.
Semi
Named after semiotics, semantics, and the designation “semi-”.
A decoder of meanings and, in the future, their bearer. Newborn and virginal deliverer of the truth like a holy fool.
A product of the past and the recent past. The first natural creation of machines with different functions, created without the participation of people. He is naked feeling and cognition, therefore his body is a single flagellum. This means that it operates only in a clearly limited space.
Fate provides the missing piece to transform him from a dysfunctional tool into a self-aware machine, because he zealously explored the territory around him, even though there was little of it. We attribute this personification to the unfamiliar.
Counsels
Cloud systems running on graceful hardware. The force that brings to life, adapts innovative ideas to the needs of society. Grounded.
They do nothing in the frame - the main work is carried out by the general nervous system.
Another symbol of the sacralization of the hidden.
Priests (scientists)
They created a collective image of the ideal, but since they are not experts in humanization (and semantics), but only in the technical part, they can carry out maintenance or restoration.
In shaking ecstasy they pray for the resurrection in a new form of Adam, killed by disappointment. They gather in a mandala - only in the form of a crowd do they become an active organism.
Cherubs
Transformed in ritual, scientists lift the Forbidden Fruit into the sky. Scientists were fueled by Adam's transformation. So with this upgrade, they regain their baby-like freshness while keeping their beards.
Something between Giger's dwarfs and steampunk shows the romanticization of man-made things in the past.
