Soothing factory footage gets dark in an animated short by London-based motion graphics designer Michael Marczewski. As it turns out, all you need to feel sympathy for a wood-chopping mechanism's Sisyphean task is to give it a face, which Marczewski does in his new minimalist short film, Vicious Cycle.Pastel pink, purple, green, and orange backgrounds designed in Cinema 4D and rendered beautifully in Arnold set the stage for chores that uncomfortably relatable robots repeat ad nauseam. They turn on microwaves, serve food, and—echoing Sisyphus—carry batteries up an inclined treadmill until the system goes haywire and they collapse under the mounting pressure of their robot lives. All Marczewski needs to do is add a bot typing art articles into a computer, and Vicious Cycle will be too real for this writer.
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Watch Vicious Cycle below and you'll be a Terminator sympathizer in no time.
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