A solemn white-collar worker looking to add a little excitement to his monotonous middle-aged existence stumbles upon a sadistic parallel universe in illustrator Cornelius Joksch’s animated short film, Adultland. Made during Joksch’s final year at the University of the West of England, Adultland is a somber yet endearing rumination on our desire for escape and the reality check that is adulthood.The film reflects this urge to incorporate spontaneity and new experiences into our daily lives and the lengths at which we will go to do so. In a conversation with Directors Notes, the filmmaker says, “It is a very personal, quirky reflection on adulthood and the search for both meaning and excitement. It is about epic struggles, the disappointment that sometimes comes after, and about how we usually stand up and try again anyway.”
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Joksch says he spent a total of 10 months working on the project. He designed the illustrations in Photoshop and animated them in After Effects. Joksch says he tried to avoid the 'Duik' rigging tool set he normally uses when animating two-dimensional characters. Instead, when faced with the busier scenes in the film, he animated key poses frame-by-frame, a process he said made creating the movements much more enjoyable. Watch Adultland in full, below:
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