CRANIAL
(2024/25)
Presented in Exhibition Everything and Then Some, University of British Columbia (2025)
Cranial is an exploration of the discordant, destructive, and inharmonious nature and effects of anxiety and depressive disorders. My animation navigates an abstract representation of my own experiences with mental health through the incongruous relationship between a baby and fish. These characters represent intentionally inharmonious beings becoming intertwined in a visually unequal relationship. The narrative follows stages of mental health effects and transformations that can come with them.
The baby is a self representation of an abstracted, hybridized being. Using the physicality of the character, I was able to further the narrative of the effects of mental health on a child's psychological and in turn physical forms. This transformation is symbolic of the ever changing and shifting takeover and control of these disorders on the character. My intention was to only heighten this abstraction throughout to represent the weight of mental health disorders through the characters state, actions and physicality. In hopes to create a visual representation that feels layered surrounding ideas of emotional digression and instability.
I HATE WHERE I’M FROM
(2023)
- Selected for the 2024 Student Okanagan Film Festival
“I Hate Where I’m From” is a look inside an imagined future of human animal hybrids; each unique physiology reflects a genetic mutation intended to excel the human species. My goal with these characters is to disturb, to fascinate, and to spark an interesting balance between the viewer and the viewed. My intention was to create a space for the audience to observe another walk of life and feel connected to them in some way: in their stark surroundings, in their mannerisms, in their deformities, or in the act of watching itself. I want the audience to contemplate what these characters' worlds are, where they're from, what they're made of and what they're meant to convey.
The process of creating these characters was heavily reliant on research and exploration of psychological aspects of the specific animals I was interested in integrating. I stuck to desert based animals as I felt their adaptations best suited my imagined earth. I then began the process of creating interesting skeletal forms that walked the line between human and animal. My focus in the end was on creating realistic, yet unrecognizable characters who still feel alive by their sense of humanity. I played a lot to find the balance, what is too human and what is too animal? I realize now that there lies the charm in my characters. That this experimentation and creation of new forms within that balance was precisely the process my backstory intended.