ABOUT

Created for the February, 2016 edition of National Geographic magazine, this film tells 40,000 years of London history in three minutes.

And in paper.

I made this film with Fernando Baptista (art director and set designer) and Monica Serrano (set construction and After Effects) to help illustrate the breadth of artifacts uncovered beneath the city of London during the excavation for a new rail line. The magazine wanted an animation to accompany the story so we set to work last fall to create a piece that would cover at least 10 periods from the Stone Age to the present day.

With a slim budget (i.e., we had to borrow studio space, lights, and camera mounts), we shot over the course of a month using a Canon C100, lite panels, and various small fresnels. Fernando and his team built the sets and characters out of watercolor paper, tissue paper, and foam core (among a few other odds and ends).

The full story is here at NatGeo: