Premiere: Like Water on Stone
2015-04-20
News
It all started when Tumo project leader Shushanik Droshakiryan met Dana Walrath, the author of "Like Water on Stone", at TedxYerevan in 2013. After finding out about the story written by Walrath, Shushanik was inspired to create an animation based on this story. Fast forward two years and the premiere of the animation based on this book will take place tomorrow at Tumo.
The team of Tumo students involved in the project used up over 120 pens and hundreds of hours to create the stunning and intricate pen and paper animation. The team, led by Shushanik, didn't want to follow a traditional style of animation and chose to depict the magical realism Walrath created through hand drawings of beautiful scenes with black ink only. This is a style which Gohar Droshakiryan, one of the animators, had been drawing in for years. The team then applied that style to create visually striking scenes. They admitted that the panoramic scenes were some of the most challenging to create. Shushanik said, "Once we achieved what we thought would be impossible, we felt exhilarated and motivated to keep on battling the hurdles."
When asked why they chose to animate this specific story, Lilit Minasyan, who created a magical scene in Nemrut, said "We wanted to commemorate the Armenian Genocide somehow, but didn't want something mournful, so when we realized the story of bravery and survival of three young siblings, we thought it to be the perfect fit for our potential audience." Lilit and Gohar had not had experience in animation prior to this project, but are very inspired to continue their future careers in animation. "It was a very challenging project for us, but we learned so much in every single phase. We're amazed with the final result and hope the viewers will enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it" said Lilit.
The team also had the chance to work directly with Dana in the process of recording voice overs for the characters, which gave them further insight into the author's thoughts and inspirations.
Come see the premiere at Tumo, in addition to a behind the scenes video and an exhibition of the original artwork tomorrow at 7pm.