In his animated quick movie, Cornelius Joksch examines how obsessions can acquire the higher hand
Berlin-based animator and illustrator Cornelius Joksch's short film Oh, Darling! is about a "clumsy but lovable loner" Andy who is obsessed with birds and cannot believe his luck when the most beautiful bird he has ever seen lands on his windowsill.
"At first I planned to make this film about random violence and what that does with how we perceive our environment afterwards. While I was starting to work on early sketches, I went through a breakup that inevitably found its way into my attempts to write stories, ”says Joksch CR. "I think the end result was a mix of those two subjects – it became a short story about how you accidentally destroy something by badly wanting it."
Stylized but charming, creates the world that Joksch in Oh, Darling! is alive and darkly weird when we see Andy's obsession with birds goes too far. "I think I always strive for a balance between the naturalistic, believable animation that you learn from Richard Williams & # 39; Animator & # 39; s Survival Kit and something more stylized that pays tribute to engineering and simplicity of design," says Joksch.
The animator has been working on the film for the past three years, although initial sketches and character designs were drawn up as early as 2016. "For the first year or so, I shared my ideas and an early version of the animation with two of them, my best friends, and we talked about the visual style and the rough plot," explains Joksch. "Since I also worked as a freelancer during the filming, I had to interrupt production several times, but everything started right from autumn 2018."
Oh darling! is jam-packed with well-composed footage and thoughtful character details, but the biggest challenge for Joksch was writing, largely because it's the first film he's produced outside of the comfort and support of university.
"I completely underestimated how much more difficult it would be without the constant support of your colleagues and tutors, ”he says. In the last phases of production, in which Joksch had worked on the film solo up to this point, he enlisted the help of Robert Löbel, Max Roof and Marcela Bustamante for additional animations and editor Sophie Marsh, who did the work and made it possible for Joksch to receive feedback from other people.
Other obstacles had to do with time: not a lack of it, but actually too much freedom to think. "It can make you rethink the story you're trying to tell, and your taste in design will change over time."
This is Joksch's most ambitious project to date and he finds that every new work becomes more complex and layered as animated short films allow him to tell any story he wants. "I just love creating weird looking characters, giving them some of my personal flaws, and then overdoing them," he says. "Doing that can be liberating, I think, as you can be open to your own shortcomings."
Ideally, Joksch hopes that the film's viewers will find the humor in the story and ultimately learn the lesson from Andy's mistake: "If you love something, leave it free".
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