Beautiful Coins, N9ve’s latest personal project, is an animated video celebrating historical and political moments throughout Europe. Quite literally, full of beautiful coins, the piece contains stunning transitions, and is accompanied by wonderful sound design which was created by N9ve themselves.
jelyl London spoke to Alessandro Novelli, founder and director of N9ve, about producing Beautiful Coins and also discovered what the Barcelona-based studio have coming up this year.
Tell us what inspired N9ve’s personal project, Beautiful Coins.
Alessandro: There was not really an event or occurrence that inspired us. It was more like a collection of ideas.
Firstly, there was the idea of bringing back something that doesn’t exist anymore. Right now, we are in the EU monetary zone; 19 nations lost a piece of their own identity and history when the switch was made to the Euro. Some of the currency we show was coined after wars, a nation’s independence, the birth of a nation or republic, after reigns, or even dictatorships.
Secondly, we wanted to show something that we struggle for, in a different way, under a different light. We wanted to connect the currency with a story, excluding any economic value, and instead looking for a different beauty that unifies all the nations.
Did you face any challenges when making the piece?
Alessandro: The challenge was to find a way to connect all the coins and create a narrative. We had 19 nations, with 6 to 10 coins from each one, so the selection process was quite long. Once we had a “story”, we had to create all the transitions from one coin to the other.
How long did it take to create?
Alessandro: More or less 1 month of production, for the complete animation and treatment, and 2 - 3 weeks of preproduction from research to sketches. The project was done in-between other commercial projects, so we didn’t work on it full time.
What other work do you have coming up in 2015?
Alessandro: Ideally, we’ll try to publish our first short film “The Guardian” at the end of 2015. Currently we’re working on a new commercial where we will try to use different styles and techniques from what we generally use! We are also figuring out the script for a potential new short film.
Tell us one interesting fact about n9ve.
Alessandro: We all live here in Barcelona but none of us are Spanish.
To see more of N9ve's fantastic work, click here. You can also view a short “making-of” Beautiful Coins on N9ve's Instagram.
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