Engrossing Short Film Features Dancing Swarms Of Animated Dead Insects

For most of us dead insects are a pain that have to be cleared away from windowsills when we have people over so you don't look like you live in filth. For filmmakers Hannes Vartiainen and Pekka Veikkolainen they're the star attraction of their short film The Death of an Insect.

The film uses a range of animation techniques, from green screening dead bugs to stop-motion and animated 3D models of X-ray CT-scans to create an engrossing and bizarre seven minutes. Throughout the film you're presented with an astonishing range of images from macro closeups to silhouettes and patterned formations dancing across the screen—with the different animation styles meshed together so well you can't really tell exactly which combination they're using at any one moment.

This rhythmic performance is set to the music of Joonatan Portaankorva which compliments the vast juxtaposition of styles in this "mad ballet". If you want to learn more about how they did it, they have a making-of video and also a very detailed forum post where they talk about how they created the various models and forms that you see. You can check out some images from that post below.

Animatics of some of the main shots in the film, built in After Effects

Insects photographed against a light table for silhouettes used in the film

Rendered point clouds created from X-ray scanned insects

Images: Hannes Vartiainen and Pekka Veikkolainen

[via Vimeo Staff Picks]

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