Faculty of Art

Experimental Animation

Daraobong Ekpo

CRAT

Emulating a professional independent animation production house, talented students collaborated through out a semester to produce and animate this short film in the first Animation Studio House course instructed by Catherine Feraday Miller. The short project has been recognized with awards and nominations on both domestic and international levels.

“Combining 2D and 3D animation, CRAT is a dark science fiction short film with roots in film and comic book noir.These influences inform the intense, stylized lighting of the characters and their environment, as well as the limited colour palette. 3D renders make up the gritty, near-deserted cityscape and futuristic laboratory.A hungry crow swoops down to snatch up an unsuspecting rat, but instead finds itself, and the rat, in the path of an oncoming car. The driver is a tall stranger with glowing red goggles. He gathers the broken remains and brings them to his lab, where he reassembles them into a Frankenstein-like cyborg creature: the CRAT.”