An animation for The On Being Project as part of their “Poetry Films” series, visualising the poem “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” by Elizabeth Alexander.
It’s a poem about poetry itself, its subtle existence in everyday moments, its wonderful mundanity or perhaps its inevitability… At least that’s what it’s about for me!
As an homage to the creative process, and pen and paper itself, I decided to animate the frames of this film directly into the pages of Elizabeth Alexander’s anthology ‘Crave Radiance’. The piece was first animated in Photoshop, then printed onto paper. Each frame was hand painted in gouache straight into the book, then scanned back in and composited in After Effects.
Once the animation was over the fluid shapes were still swirling around my head, so I hand embriodered the colours onto fabric and turned them into a pair of shoes…