In the summer of 1992, when filmmaker Kangmin Kim was just a boy, his parents drove him out to a strange slaughterhouse to drink deer’s blood from a severed antler. Growing up in Korea, Kim was often sick and his parents were constantly searching for unconventional remedies that might help their child build up his strength. Kim and his production company, Studio Zazac, reenact this particularly odd venture in a new stop-motion animation known as Deer Flower. Utilizing a nuanced combination of 3D-printed objects, textured 2D printouts, hand-drawn animation, and 35mm film, Kim creates a vividly detailed setting riddled with creative visual gags that play with the various material textures used in the film.
Deer Flower separates itself from other stop-motion animations in the way it animates static materials like fake wood and cardboard. The story is told through a cast of Playmobil-like puppet sculptures built by Kim. The filmmaker actually released a short video dissembling one of his puppets limb by limb, which you can watch, after the full animation, below:
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Deer Flower was this week’s Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. Be sure to check out more work by the artist on his website and follow Studio Zazac on Instagram.
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