Forest Dreams (short film)

Forest Dreams

Forest Dreams is a noncommercial collaborative project of two artists – Victoria Samoilova and Yaroslav Primachenko. It is our declaration of love to the animated films with their surreal imaginary worlds and characters that inhabit them.

We wanted to tell a story that happens on a misty night, when the world falls asleep. A story, which would be somehow dark, mystical and mysterious but at the same time would feel friendly and vibrant.

The Creation Process

We imagined the spirit of the moon as a small creature with a flute as his nose, because to play night songs and call souls to the moon is his main life purpose. His winding top resembles a swinging flag. An easily recognizable shape – a good landmark in a dark forest.

The main concept of the film is based on a mythological idea that souls are traveling when live creatures are falling asleep. That is exactly the reason why everyone see dreams at night.

We wanted to make the mist and the fog an essential part of the film imagery. Not only hiding something in it, but also accenting and amplifying the things we needed.

Every frame went through lots of iterations and changes before taking its final state. We decided to make the cartoon in 3D, but wanted to keep that illustrated look and feel. That is why we mostly used simple, easy to read shapes and forms.

We really hope that you would like this project as much as we enjoyed working on it. For us it was a very personal and inspiring journey. It is our first experience in this field but now, when it is finished, we are encouraged to move on exploring new frontiers and bringing some exciting ideas to life.