Inspired by lunar cycles and their effect on tides, veteran motion designer/illustrator Bran Dougherty-Johnson conjures a minimalist and meditative short film from his studio on Shelter Island, NY.

Bran Dougherty-Johnson: “New First Full Last is an exploration of the feeling of standing on the shore watching moonlight on water and not wanting the moment to pass by too quickly.

“I used watercolor to do a series of monochromatic paintings, then cut them up into 2×2-inch squares. Photographing each of those and sequencing them led to an organic flickering texture that became the basis for thie film.

“Embracing the idea from [American artist/designer/educator] Sister Corita Kent to ‘consider everything an experiment’, I created shapes and patterns with the watercolor textures – exploring ways for the shapes to rise and fall, cycle and loop. What starts off as a simple motif through layering and repeating, builds into a complex array of rhythms and patterns.

“The hand-animated words used throughout the piece are the names of the four phases of the moon, alongside the words ‘cycle’ and ‘love’ – modular words that can recombine, switch order, and meaning.

“The original audio was recorded with a patch made in VCVRack, an open-source modular synthesizer simulator using both sequenced and randomly-generated voices.”
 
 

 
Director/animator: Bran Dougherty-Johnson

Music: Bran Dougherty-Johnson