I forgot how to restI forgot howto rest

The brief was an animation about everyday life. For two weeks I filmed whatever I liked around me, like sunsets, trees, ducks and geese, and still couldn’t cut a coherent story out of it. In the end I made a series of animations about one thing instead: rest.

Or rather, the lack of it. Lately I’ve realised I’ve forgotten how to rest.

The number of things to do is overwhelming. There’s always something to tick off first, to “deserve” it. And once I’ve deserved it, I scroll Instagram until my brain stops responding, which only makes me more tired. My thoughts run wild the moment I don’t have a phone in my hand. It’s hard to get quiet.

So these animations are about that — about flat batteries, about overstimulation, about the feeling that life moves too fast to stop and catch a breath. I wanted to hand those emotions over, because I know I’m not alone in them, and I like making things other people can recognise themselves in.

I went with stop motion because I wanted to play with ideas I’d been carrying around, and to paint a bit with Photoshop brushes.

I aimed for something ephemeral, organic and light, against a subject that isn’t pleasant at all. I wanted the project to feel analogue, so I added paper textures and worked with a set of brushes that imitate pastels and crayons.