Description:

‘Criminal Carrots’ is a short animated film that was inspired by the animator listening to her Russian parents' life stories, something she describes as one of her favourite pastimes. This led to her wanting to immortalise at least one such story in animated form. She interviewed her mother, capturing her retelling of how her younger self used to sneak carrots from her grandmother's garden and how she covered up her ‘crime’, the film becoming a visualisation of a comedic take on the simple childhood experience of thieving carrots.
The animation aims to create a sense of childhood nostalgia both in terms of the storyline itself, as well as the way it is illustrated and animated, adopting a stylised approach to the illustrations with bright colours and exaggerated features, including creating details specific to the story’s origins in Russia, including the authentic Russian fence featuring horizontal birch branches, and researching Slavic countryside dress code and garden layout to better portray the characters of Grandma, the Child, Russian log cottages and the carrot patch itself. The work draws on digital "paper" cut-out aesthetics and techniques to animate the characters and backdrops.