What a journey this has been. I made my first pitch while I was still in Greece. It was a very melancholic idea which was influenced by my environments and my feelings. I was feeling very melancholic at the time as I was very isolated in my hometown, the weather was very windy, cloudy and stormy all the time and a few other more personal things were happening at the same time. When the time finally came for me to move in the UK, I realised that what I was trying to make wasn't truly coming from me but my frustration and sadness that I was experiencing at the time. I changed the concept again to something much funnier initially but it transformed into a more serious story. Throughout the Christmas break, I was preparing the story, developing it, scribbling down diagrams, notes, taking inspiration from the projects I was working on at the time and chipping away at it slowly. I even made a script for it, worked it, tweaked it many times until the time came to present it as an animatic. My involvement with film workshops definitely influenced my art direction. Having access to a rich library also meant that my inspiration and research expanded even more. I discovered that I am very drawn to 16mm film and analogue media and photography in general. I learnt to shoot, develop, edit and enlarge analogue film mediums and work in the dark room, which still makes me feel like I'm going to outer space. It was a fantastic experience and the greatest part of the journey was the people that I met and their willingness to help me out through trial and error and learn with me. My animatic was poor. The timing was too quick and the message wasn't getting across to the viewers. I was disappointed. I was advised to take a break from it and rethink the structure. It just wasn't flowing out of me naturally. It felt incredibly forced. The night of the same day, I found the solution. Inspired by the youtube channel Soft White Underbelly, where people whose voice isn't usually heard like social outcasts, criminals, drug addicts are interviewed and they get to share their life story, I decided to follow a similar structure. I was really liking this new direction and it finally felt right. I twisted the roles of the post man and the desert figure. I turned him from an empathetic and kind person to a psychotic and delusional murderer. And the desert figure into the victim of an obsessive murder. I recorded myself performing the dialogue of the psychotic post man as he was interviewed and my friend Elin asked me the questions. with the puppets I made, I took snaps of the post man in different positions and quickly worked to produce an animatic. At the same time, I recorded some piano tracks. I also came into contact with an incredible voice actor who absolutely elevated the film. Everything was flowing naturally and it still is as the film isn't 100% completed. Through my conversations with other artists and people, I learnt a lot about the creative process and I finally found a way to produce animation that didn't feel forced. I finally have found my voice and I'm now very comfortable making films of any duration. This has been an unbelieavable journey not just because of how I changed myself but also the people that I met and supported me through and throughout, were patient with me and took me under their wing in a way so I can too become as free and satisfied artistically as them. Animation for me used to be a foreign language that I was strugling to speak it properly. Now, animation is my native language and will continue to evolve.
