Lava Bed Bats

In early 2020, me and illustrator Celine Krempp spent two months of research, animating and consulting with professional scientists to create a short film about astro scientists. Although these scientists are bats, they do meet strange outer worldly bats that are as friendly as they are menacing. They are taken into lava tube caves, which are found mostly on Earth, yet the moon also bears its large dark spots from asteroids and previously flown lava.

In this particular short, we chose to depict these caverns as strange, spooky, and inhabited by a mysterious cult. The latter implies there may be a reason why most people don’t speak of those lava tubes, because no one ever lived to talk about them.

Animated and designed in both ToonBoom and Photoshop, with a little dosage of After Effects thrown in.