The Blether

The Blether is a new independent talks night based in London Hackney, showcasing speakers from a variety of backgrounds and expertise.

I was commissioned to create a short film and posters to promote their latest series of talks on the subject of mental health.
Working together with Justin Mulcahy, we developed a concept that would carry through moving image and stills.

Mental health is an incredibly complicated issue to tackle - even more so because it means different things to different people.
So, to show this, we stripped the issue back to its bare bones and asked a bunch of different people "what makes you happy?" and "what makes you sad?", using the simplicity of the format to prove the subject's inherent complexity.

I later brought this concept to life using illustrated characters and stop-motion animation.
The characters for both film and print were handmade from cutouts of wood and playfully assembled with found everyday objects. Every hand-crafted character was then painted using elaborate colour schemes, giving each one their own distinct personality.