“It took seven days to create the world; it only took one to disrupt its balance,” says the tagline for an award-winning animation by a team of students in France. “Au 8ème Jour,” which translates to “On the 8th Day” in French, uses CG, or computer-generated animation techniques to create a three-dimensional world in a stop-motion style.
A multitude of vibrant animals and landscapes appear sewn from fabric in the film’s otherworldly realm, each tethered to a single piece of yarn that connects it to a kind of central energy force—a vibrant, tightly-wrapped skein in the sky. But when mysteriously dark tendrils of black fiber begin to leech into this idyllic world, families and herds must run for their lives.
What’s causing the change—and what the black threads eventually cause—seems beyond imagining. Yet the fantastical situation is not so distant from something familiar right here at home.
The United Nations now concedes that its Paris Climate Agreement goal—limiting global temperature rise, due to greenhouse gas emissions, to 1.5 degrees Celsius above “pre-industrial” levels—is not possible. The science-backed goal was established in 2015 to limit the harms of rising temperatures around the world. Though set in an imaginary world, “Au 8ème Jour” is a beautiful, stark, and poignant reminder of what’s at stake right here on Earth.
“Au 8ème Jour” was created by a team of 5th-year students at Piktura in Roubaix, France, a school focused on animation, illustration, and video game design. The work of Agathe Sénéchal, Flavie Carin, Elise Debruyne, Alicia Massez, and Théo Duhautois, the film has been selected for more than 250 awards. And it’s won 60, including Best Animated Short at both the Bend Film Festival and Santa Barbara International Film Festival last year.
See more from Piktura on Vimeo, and head to the end of this article to glimpse the meticulous behind-the-scenes digital process.
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