Back in 2018 I played piano for composer friend Aaron Buckley’s latest short film Cumulus.

Cumulus is a story that follows an adventurous Welsh girl called Penwyn as she travels to the world of the clouds, produced by a team that reaches around the world under the leadership of award-winning director Ioan Holland.

An adventurous young girl named Penwyn, running away from her worrisome dad on the coast of South Wales, stumbles across a Yank of a talking Blue Footed Booby bird, going by the name Mister Booby, distraught his chicks are flying the nest. On the hunt for adventure, Penwyn follows him as he rushes off in search of his chicks to the mysterious and wonderful world of the clouds in this charming and heartfelt watercolour-animated story.

Cumulus – a Watercolour Painting come to life

The intention with the film was to make a watercolour painting come to life, and it’s the experimentation with new techniques that combine real with digital watercolour that created the look and feel of Cumulus.

By blending real watercolour with digitally painted watercolour, we hope to have achieved an animated aesthetic that feels both tangible and touchable like watercolour paper, while also feeling alive and active to drive the story forward.

A 2D digitally animated film, each frame of character animation in Cumulus was digitally drawn by hand, with a combination of digital and real watercolour bringing the character colours to life.

The result is a watercolour world that takes you to wondrous places, while having a real tangible texture that feels as though you could touch it.

Cumulus at the British Animation Festival

Cumulus has been selected for the British Animation Film Festival and will be screening in London at 6.30pm Friday 10th May 2019 at the Leicester Square Cineworld

Tickets are available to purchase here