Abstract animation by MA filmmakers selected for Punto y Raya Festival in Vienna
‘Galumph’ was created by MA students Andreas Fobes, Catherine Graham, and Katherine Dunn, who were asked to make a one-minute abstract film using the randomly selected word ‘galumph’ as a starting point. The team’s film was chosen to screen at Punto y Raya festival, and they participated in an online Q & A following the screening.
Andreas said, ‘We decided to try and animate abstract walk cycles (Galumph means to “move in a clumsy, ponderous, or noisy manner”) and came up with an easy-to-follow step by step process of building these walk cycles up from simple looping shapes. We would animate blobs moving around in arcs, connect these blobs with lines, add “tendons” and other decorative elements and suddenly you’d have an awkwardly moving creature. After the animation was complete, I made the music, matching the percussive rhythms to the walk cycles.’
Andreas added that making the film entirely remotely due to covid restrictions had been tricky, but that ‘all these constraints ended up being useful, though, because they forced us to keep our ideas simple and concise and really informed the final film.’
