CHEKHOV
DOT
SEAGULL
animation short
2014
While watching this short animation you become an audience of a theatre festival. During this festival a young author Konstantin Treplev (one of the main characters of Chekhov's play ''Seagull'') is showing his play ''People, Lions, Eagles''. One of the questions in Chekhov's play was - what is true art? How do you decide what is just beautiful and what is fake?
Long before the work on this film started I made an owl appliqué. I love appliqués, I love working with paper. My good friend and animation director Vika Spyragina liked my owl and said that it would be grate to make a film with this owl.
Maybe a year later I had an offer from Mater-Film Studio to make a short animation. They asked if I had a project and I said ''Yes!'' (even though I did not :))
I was sourcing for an idea and found this owl. I called my mother (my inspiration) and asked if she remembers any text (a play, a poem, a joke) with an owl. She started listing: "people, lions eagles........no, no owls there unfortunately''. But I loved the idea to screen Treplev's play from a play.
As my project was excepted by the studio I had to decide which animation technic I should choose. Before that I only done drawn animation. The question was how to transfer paper appliqué into animation. Cut put was an obvious decision. But the problem was with the rough edges.
My inspiration - Abramtsevo. A mansion that writers and artists used to leave and work in together in the end of 19's - begining of 20's century.
Interesting fact. I had to make mid Russian landscape. I always thought of Russia as of a cold country. So I used cold shades of green and blue but it didn't work. I couldn't figure it out. It didn't look like Russia. It turned out that Russia is actually in worm colors. More khaki than green.
