How Have you Been?
Uploaded to Vimeo by Heather Colbert.
“Hypnos is a solitary creature, creating happier dreams while people sleep, but there is something else living in his cave…”
The official music video for Tom Rosenthal’s for ‘How Have You Been?’ is a another stop-motion masterpiece by director Heather Colbert.
Colbert is an animator specializing in stop motion and drawn animation. Her widely acclaimed music videos for musicians Mark Nevin and Tom Rosenthal have been featured on Directors Notes, Dezeen, BOOOOOOOM, ZippyFrames and Dragonframe and screened at film festivals such as Montreal Stop Motion Festival and Fantoche in Switzerland.
Colbert works out the ideas of her characters through sketchbook doodles and more polished character paintings.
Colbert’s latest film is a beautiful and moving fusion of stop motion and drawn animation about looking after all parts of oneself. She provides a glimpse into her inspiration when she writes on heather-colbert.com that “Hypnos lives in fear of what he cannot see, but through tentative steps he realizes the shape in the darkness is just trying to help him, and the two characters gradually accept each other and comfort one another.”
“This story can be read as two beings finding each other,” she adds. “And also as a depiction of anxiety and depression, where the protagonist learns to accept and look with compassion at all sides of themselves.”
Colbert has turned a lifelong fascination into a successful career as an illustrator and animator. In an interview with Animated Women UK Colbert says, “I had always been fascinated by the unique charm that comes from the real light and textures in stop motion, growing up on all the programs made by Small Films. But through university and since graduating, it has been a gradual realization that I could be someone who makes films this way too.”
When the wire skeleton of Hypnos broke at the knees near the end of the shoot, Colbert had to make a replica to finish the final scenes.
Today, Colbert has been featured on the website Great Women Animators and was named one of eight female filmmakers to watch by the American Stop Motion Magazine. So when she generously provides a fascinating and thorough look behind-the-scenes at her work on ‘How Have You Been’ at Hangar Animation Studios in Bristol, UK…it’s wise to take an opportunity to check it out.
You can see step-by-step how Colbert does her character design, storyboarding, character development, puppet making and shooting with an abundance of pictures and notes.
‘How Have You Been’ is Colbert’s second Vimeo Staff Pick following the stop-motion music video for Nevin’s ‘Dolly Said No To Elvis’.
Stop Motion Magazine calls ‘How Have You Been’ a beautiful work of art and declares Colbert “a talent who has brought a blend of digital painting, hand drawn animation and stop motion together to produce a story that brings us into a fantasy world filled with mystery, shadow, and light.”
Kudos to Colbert for lifting the curtain on the mystery a bit and opening up her world to other artists.