Afternoon Animation: A Robot Searches for Meaning, Has Serious Case Of The Mondays

Today the Creators Project presents the exclusive launch for LOS ROSALES, a short animated film by Fabrica’s Daniel Ferreira. Originally conceived as a music video, LOS ROSALES is a wordless portrait of labor, technology, and the bohemian quest for truth and beauty…as told through the eyes of a robot.

Endlessly toiling in a grease-stained world made of discarded bits of outdated technology, the robot runs on a treadmill for the workday. As the worker-bot stamps off the days on a calendar with a screw, every month’s work produces a “check” of a mecha-rose, which provides both an aesthetic and nutritional payload.

When one day a mechanical failure causes the robot’s entire cycle of monotonous existence to be uprooted, a choice to stick with ‘the way things have always been’ or jump onto an unknown path presents itself. Watch LOS ROSALES in its entirety below:

LOS ROSALES from Fabrica.

Described as a “steampunk robot vision,” LOS ROSALES conjurs up the rusted noir aesthetic employed by some of our stop-motion favorites- Jan Svankmajer and The Brothers Quay come to mind- and blends it with familiar games like Machinarium to present a surprisingly emotional and relatable portrait. Any of us who have labored at the same disjointed tasks for unseen profits can relate to the little robot’s desire to break out of the day to day way of things and smash the copy machine*, if you know what we’re saying. Let us know what you think of LOS ROSALES in the comments!

office space printer scene (original) from alazankin on Vimeo.

All images are stills from LOS ROSALES and are courtesy the artist.