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 cut outs 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.