ABOUT

A couple of years ago, I received a message from my friend Andrea Braga, a brilliant motion director and designer I met in London a while ago. As a personal project, he had created a set of 15 digital illustrations depicting different animal species at risk of extinction. He was preparing an exhibition and thought it'd be cool to get the illustrations to pop out of their frames using augmented reality.

To do that, he reached out to a bunch of his friends and contacts and managed to put together a top team of 15 animators and 3 sound designers, with the task of bringing each illustration to life. The idea was that each artist would get assigned one of the animals, and would create a closed-loop animation that would start and finish on the static illustration, with no limitation on style or technique. The concept was to draw attention to the animals endangerment and show their disappointment with the humans who brought them to the verge of extinction.

Turtles have always been one of my favourite animals. I got to swim and dive with them on many occasions across different continents (sometimes following them way deeper than I should have, according to the screams of at least one diving instructor), and I always felt this weird connection with them, so my choice of animal to animate was pretty clear from the beginning.

The need to stay within the format, time and style constraints of the concept freed me to focus on more creative decisions and play around with some new techniques I wanted to try, so it made this a really fun project to work on. This animation was the result of all that…

_Augmented Reality Animation
_Cinema 4D / After Effects

Illustration & Concept: Andrea Braga
Direction & Animation: Ernex
Sound Design: Sanctus

2023