After designing a recruitment poster for the design team at the Chinese internet giant (and his current employer) Baidu, director/animator Donerzozo extended the central astronaut character into an atmospheric full-CG passion project.

Donerzozo in Shanghai: “After the poster was completed, I thought by chance that I could use astronauts, a clock (past and future), and make a very experimental short film.

“The concept that came to mind at the time was from a sentence of Nike’s slogan: ‘Yesterday you said tomorrow’. Next, I tried to convey each of us in the form of a stream of consciousness.

“We should not be subject to the past – people, things, spaces, etc., but we can always be curious, passionate, and persistent to explore from an unknown distance.

“The whole story is controlled from the beginning and is required to go to a distant place that looks very large, flashing back, entangled in the cage and experience of the past, and finally awakened to get rid of control and move towards freedom.

“Also extended to think of a proposition, be a man, or be a machine? Be a person who has independent thinking, grasps his own destiny, and has subjective initiative; be a machine, and repeat the same work every day until it is replaced by ai.

“Don’t lock yourself in a cage，Free yourself to discover a new world and yourself.”
 

 

Director/animator: Donerzozo
Music/SFX: Pablo Salgado
Special thanks: Evan Huang