This month, background designer extraordinaire Ada Poclyn (who has created backgrounds for the Myths and Legends, Shakespeare Lives and Etefy series’ of films amongst others) managed to find a little bit of downtime in between projects. Instead of having a cheeky snooze on the sofa, she decided to take the opportunity to create a short, experimental animated film inspired by the beauty and complexity of human consciousness: Aware

“What is consciousness?

The quest to find an answer took a path in the direction of senses, awareness and the relationship between these intangibles and the activity within the brain. The film explores what’s physical, what’s untouchable, and how they both create one’s personal world.”

With luminous jellyfish, apple carrying hedgehogs and interplanetary brain synapses, we don’t always know where Ada gets her ideas from, but they sure are purdy!

‘Aware’ was hand-painted in Photoshop, then taken in to After Effects for animation, effects and compositing work. Music was composed by Tom Silas

And this isn’t the only time Ada’s managed to squeeze a personal animation project in around her day job; she recently created a motion graphics snippet too – we may have to start increasing her workload! ‘We should all be feminists‘ is inspired by a quote from Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s spoken essay of the same name.

And here’s Ada eating celebratory biscuits – good to know she does stop working occasionally!