This project was a sparked by a dream I had, where a greed and temptation lead to a never ending cycle of doom for the people of a strange village made of newspaper. The project was scoped and I teamed up with Dominic Talavera Karslake, my brother, in order to create a stop motion animation that would almost drive us insane.
The art direction for this project was very specific in my head, I wanted to portray a melancholic world that had a very limited and earthy color palette. Once the initial ideas where pined down, the construction of the village commenced. It was made out of cardboard, wood, newspaper, wires and a branch that would serve as the focal point of the story. Dominic and I discovered that animating the characters would be a difficult challenge due to mobility and stability problems. We finally came up with a character design that would allow us to animate the characters without the need of a complicated rig. The faceless characters were created out of wire and black tape, giving them an air of mystique.
In total, bringing this world to life took about two weeks of tiring animation. After taking more than 1700 pictures we proceeded to start the post production process. This was a challenge in itself, it required stitching all the images and finding sounds that would complement the story perfectly and that would create an air of mystique and desolation.
In the end the project was worth every second. It won second prize in a contest put together by the biggest cinema company in Mexico, Cinepolis and 3DMX, a university at the forefront of digital design and animation in Mexico. It was a project that allowed us to discover the beauty and intricacy of the stop motion technique and how it could serve as a perfect tool in order to narrate a story of desolation and loneliness.