Danya Grigorev
Homesick is a 4-minute animated short about the longing to feel at home, even when you already are there.
"Struggling to make sense of what home means for them, Muir gets lost in the ever-changing space where they live. They stumble through shifting corridors, see their past in mirrors and fall down flying staircases as everything around them slowly falls apart.
Muir searches for the way out, hoping that seeing their home from without will finally define it."
Focus On Animation
I specialise in character animation, so I strived to put it at the heart of this project. I wanted the main character to be easy and fun to animate, but also look solid enough to ensure visual consistency.
A major part of the production process has been collaborating with other animators and providing them with assets and feedback to make sure they can be proud of their work. I am incredibly thankful to every member of the crew behind this film.
Home, as an idea, is something so fundamental in our lives that we rarely consider its meaning. If we were to define home for ourselves, would it be a place or a collection of memories? Does it offer safety or turn hostile? Is home always a space, or can it be a person, or a feeling, or is it gone forever? If so, can it be rebuilt?
My film is an attempt to capture the process of examining these questions and navigating my own feelings surrounding them, even if there are no simple answers to be found.
A major part of Homesick’s visuals is symbols: each of them represents the essence of what home could be, from a familiar drawing of a house to a labyrinth or a mirror. Building on this idea, I wanted the space the character navigates to appear simple and somewhat abstract. Objects in the film are depicted more as visual signs than specific items, appearing in color only when they carry emotional meaning. Along with the sketchy outlines chosen to underline the unstable nature of the setting, I used a variety of textures created on paper to fill the backgrounds.
My thesis discusses Tekkonkinkreet, the animated film directed by Michael Arias in 2006. The film’s imaginative urban setting, Treasure Town, plays a central role in the film's narrative, so my work examines its intrinsic connection to its characters as they attempt to adapt or oppose the city’s perpetual metabolism. This analysis explores the unique variety of components of Treasure Town’s image and considers its relation to the film’s central idea of contrasts. Overall, this thesis attempts to determine how envisioning a fictional city in the animation medium encourages us to consider the state of modern cities and the importance of humanity in them.
Similar to Homesick, my dissertation probes the questions around the spaces we inhabit and how our perspectives shape them.
I am a director and animator with a diverse skill set across multiple areas of the 2D pipeline. Animation has always been the art form that moves me most deeply, so through my work I strive to capture emotions and experiences that are difficult to express in any other medium.
