Judge's comments:

The bold and distinctive style of this piece of work captured the judge's eye and elevated it to become the gold winner. The illustrative animation style was a highlight, beautifully simple with a wonderful colour palette, and delivered across a long duration is an impressive achievement.

Description:

Puma is a short, animated video that draws from personal accounts and takes inspiration from editorial illustrations to build a fictionalised narrative about coping with acute anxiety disorder.
Growing up with Generalised Anxiety Disorder and now raising two young daughters, I felt compelled to discuss and share my thoughts on this topic. It was crucial to construct an honest depiction of living with this debilitating condition and connect with those affected, normalising the experience and easing the sometimes unreasonable pressure and expectations imposed by society. According to WHO, an estimated 300 million people worldwide suffer from an anxiety disorder annually. While there are many ways to ease the burden of mental disorders, this video focuses on the most fundamental one, as taught by luminaries from Sidharta Gautama to renowned psychologist Carl Rogers. By cultivating self-awareness and accepting our strengths and vulnerabilities, we can achieve personal growth and fulfilment. This lesson is at the heart of this project.

The premise for the short was inspired by a recurring childhood dream where a wild puma roams free inside my home, shattering not only my nerves but my world and everything I held dear. The experience of a wild and dangerous predator invading a safe, domestic space felt like a fitting metaphor for the visceral and debilitating experience of acute anxiety. The narrative utilises this metaphor to tell the story of Valentina, a young writer submitting her first manuscript to a publishing house and yearning for the approval of the industry and her peers. In pursuit of her creative fulfilment, Valentina wrangles with her anxiety, striving to tame and come to terms with these emotions, finally finding a safe space within where she can face her fears.

To portray the surge of emotions the protagonist experiences, the short video employs a graphic-driven narrative with symbolic set-pieces. It was essential to balance powerful imagery that conveyed emotion with an attractive and relatable aesthetic. Editorial illustration, with its vintage comic look and educational nature, was the perfect fit for this project, especially for its use of symbolism to pack a lot of information within a limited space. Using a narrow colour palette and concise graphics gives Puma an editorial feel while giving the production a distinct look. The colours where specifically chosen to outline and connect the principal elements of the narrative, light and shadow is used to convey her ever shifting and conflicting emotions, and shapes and movements underline her emotions as well as illustrate narrative concepts.

By juxtaposing the familiar with the uncanny, the domestic with the wild, this project encourages viewers to reflect on the fragility of the boundaries we construct. It underscores the importance of cultivating self-awareness and accepting our strengths and vulnerabilities to achieve personal growth and fulfilment. While this insight holds immense value for anyone living with an anxiety disorder, the project is primarily geared towards empathizing with young and less experienced individuals to provide resilience during challenging moments.