Learning to Fly

Emerging

This illustration and animation project is extremely personal to me. It records my experience of the pandemic in 2020.  It also reflects the experience of millions like me, who were told to shield. Unfortunately, this is an experience that has been repeated several times now.

I love butterflies  so using the motif of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, exhausted and not quite ready to fly, seemed absolutely appropriate. To prepare to make this film, I watched several videos of the butterfly life cycle, so that I could be as accurate as possible whilst being true to the spirit of what I was trying to say.  This is not a film of the life-cycle of a butterfly though; whilst it uses that motif, it is a film about my experience, my feelings and my hopes for freedom.

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To create this short film,  I used  a combination of stills illustration, layering, stop-motion, distortion of stills and simple green screen animation to create the illusion of movement.  

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