Listening

A short animation I made about listening well to other people - especially those who aren’t like you.

Awards update

Between the Blue and Green Film Festival - Festival Opening Film

Dublin International Short Film and Music Festival - Best Animation: nominee

New York Animation Film Awards - Best Animation: Semi-Finalist

Horsham Film Festival - Best Animation: winner

A little bit of background…

In 2018 Glen Scrivener tweeted out a very helpful thread about listening that stuck with me so I created this sequence of images to illustrate it.

Recently I have been exploring 2D animation and decided to make something a bit more substantial than 20 second Insta-loops. This sequence was a natural fit because I think it carries something valuable for wider society to learn from. It is no secret that animation is a long and difficult process, but when it works well it can be deeply impactful - therefore I think Glen’s ideas were a great fit.

You might also notice that the animated piece is quite different to the original sequence. This is because this project was primarily about exploring the feel of the ideas - I wanted to have a structure but as the sequences grew I allowed myself to be drawn into what felt right inside the world of the animation. It’s a weird thing to be thinking about but there is something magical about bringing dead lines to life that makes the gruelling grind ultimately worthwhile.

Thanks for reading this far. I hope this film provokes and encourages you towards better listening. Please share it and get in touch if you found it helpful.

For the nerds: I wrote a blog post about how I have been adventuring into animation and the tools/learning steps I took getting to this point.