Animated Film "Apendi and the Moon"

Student: Polyantseva Aleksandra

Educational Programme: Design (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2019

My graduation project, called “Apendi and the Moon”, is a cartoon about a gastarbaiter (migrant worker) who dreams of becoming an acrobat in a Moscow circus. This story, based on a case of the rejection of a “stranger” in a circus team, illustrates not only the problems of so called closed communities, but also xenophobia in general. While showing the reluctance of the circus administration to recruit Apendi, who is kyrgiz, I intend to show a biased attitude of a Western man to the refugees from third world countries. The cartoon is completely made in 2D with the use of manual animation. What is more, to understand the structure of a classic circus costume for character design we also researched archival photographs of American circuses, straight from the beginning of the 20th century.

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