The project and inspiration

On september 2017 I started working on my graduation project. At first I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with it. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to make a film that stood out from the others with the quality and quantity of animation.

To do so, I decided to make a film that did not necessarily follow a certain narrative, but focused more around beautiful landscapes, interesting characters and convincing animation.

The inspiration for this film was an animator that always has always been a big influence on my work: Felix Colgrave. In particular his film The Elephants Garden. When I first saw his film in 2013, I was in absolute awe and I knew immediately that I wanted to make a film similar to this.

the design and philosophy

At first I wanted to create my film not by writing down what was going to happen. Instead I wanted to work on certain visual ideas, which would keep evolving the more I kept working on them. This created situations and animation that were impossible to write down, because they only work as a visual experience. Although I really enjoyed working in this way, it didn’t result in a film, but in a small compilation of different animations.

To fix this I decided to start building a world in which my film would take place. I came up with several different landscapes for the world: The core, a desert, an ocean and a forest. To make these landscapes stand out from one another, I decided to give each landscape its own color scheme. Another thing I decided to do regarding color, is to minimize the color green in the film, to create a dissociation from planet earth.

These landscapes, although interesting to look at, still did not structure a film. Therefore I decided to formulate a beginning and an end. Which, as the title of the film might suggest, was to end the film where it began, creating a cycle. Apart from defining a beginning and end, I formulated transitions between the scenes. This is when a little creature was born: Slakkig. Slakkig, roughly translated as “Snail-ish”, symbolizes the beginning of life and evolution. Throughout the film slakkig changes shape multiple times, to benefit its environment and itself. Another thing to note about the life on this planet, is that is doesn’t thrive through violence, but by having symbiotic relationships with one another. This makes the world of Cycle a utopian planet, full of mystery and wonder.