A few weeks back I was told that the father of a friend of mine was doing a documentary in which he needed an animator to do a couple of simple things. We’ve exchanged contact and I’m suddenly in his project!
His name is Luis Correia and the documentary is filmed in Bijagós and it records the life and traditions of the tribe living there. They take everything they can from nature, food, clothes, entertainment…
The documentary starts with an old myth from the land. A girl, who was an orphan, was being raised by her evil aunt. The poor girl was doing all the hard work, carrying things and living the life of a slave. One day, while feeling really depressed, she takes a walk by the sea and seats on the rocks. She asks god to take her and turn her into another living thing. The sea levels raised until she was fully covered by water and turned into a manatee that then swam across the ocean.
For the people in Bijagós believe that manatees come from people. The man in the beginning of the documentary is telling the story while illustrating on fabric with paint he just made.
My job is to animate those illustrations! It will probably be a 10 second animations but I’m sure it will take me a month at least…
I already started making some animation work but there’s always things to improve and change. Working with Luis has been great and I can’t believe I got this opportunity!
For now I’m Illustrating on Photoshop since I don’t know any other program but it working alright. I’m doing a frame by frame 2D animation.
Here are some screenshots of some of the editing:
The girl on the screen is the main character. She was drawn by the man who told the story and all I did was « cut » her legs in order to be able to move them around. I cut them in half so there is an angle between the upper and the downer leg making a small joint, the knee.
I have quite a few scenes to animate and I’m a bit worried about the time and if I’ll be able to fulfill what Luis wants…
For now I’ll keep trying and we’ll hope for the best! stay tuned 😉
Ps: sorry for any misspellings… I am a bit tired..