Sweet, sad, and ultimately sublime, the culmination of Nikita Diakur and Redbear Easterman’s intriguing and innovative Ugly Project is a 12-minute animated fever dream the directors describe as “a broken simulated short film about kindness and coexistence.”

According to the Vimeo interview: “Diakur outsourced parts of the animation process to dynamic computer simulation. Meaning, Diakur created the scenes and the characters while leaving other aspects of the animation entirely up to a computer’s calculations.

“Diakur explains that ‘when you work towards a predictable outcome, it can quickly get boring. A possible escape is to keep the process as accidental as possible.'”
 

Direction: Nikita Diakur, Redbear Easterman
Animation Assistance: Gerhard Funk, Phil Maron, Nicolas Trotignon
End Titles: Bastian J. Schiffer
Assets & FX: Ozan Korkut, Chris Lühning, Mitch Martinez from mitchmartinez.com, Julia Merkschien, Hannes Raff
Associate Producer: Amid Amidi

Music: Enrica Sciandrone, Cédric Dekowski, Felix Reifenberg
Recording, Mix, Sound Design: Nicolas Martigne, David Kamp / studiokamp
Mastering: Bernd Thurig

Production Funding Liaison: Karsten Matern
Made with support of 206 backers on Kickstarter