Neptune Frost
Neptune Frost is an Afrofuturist sci-fi musical directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman.
I was brought onto the project to conceptualize and direct the animation on eight animated sequences throughout the film. I was particularly interested in the idea, core to the narrative, that the people who mine the materials used in computers and smartphones have a unique point of access to power over the digital world.
Being a non-Black person in a country that profits from the exploitation of the very people represented in the film, and also having very little knowledge about East African cultures, I was intentional about researching as much as I could to make work that reflected and respected the culture, people, and land.
Below are a few examples of my work in the ideation process.
Neptune being taken to a dream world by a spirit guide (portrayed with spinning bicycle wheels on his back). Their vehicle through the dream world was inspired by the design of fishing boats on Lake Kivu, near where the film was set and shot.
Coltan rock with miners for an early scene in the film
A sketch for Neptune’s appearance in the dream world. I wanted to use light and color to give her increasing depth and dimension as she attunes to her supernatural abilities.
Above and below are more early experiments in the use of light and color for animated portrayals of the main character/s.
Above and below are two early sketches of Neptune in the dream/digital world. Below is a visualization of her accessing and controlling streams of data worldwide.
Another idea for a vehicle into and through the dream world was a baobab tree that the protagonist sits under in an early scene in the film.
Imigongo is a traditional art form typically made by women using cow dung. The style is characterized by strong geometric designs using black, white, and red, and is traditionally found on the walls of huts, on pottery, and on large-scale canvases. The art form almost disappeared during the 1994 genocide, and has since been revived by women’s cooperatives as a way to reconnect and heal after a collective trauma. I explored a few ways of animating in that style, then tried to use those elements to illustrate the Rwandan characters’ reclamation of the digital realm they build through the materials they mine.
These are a few examples of ideas I had for sequences in the film where the line between reality and the digital world become blurred, and the power that the protagonist and miners exert over the digital world becomes apparent. (Song is “The Noise Came From Here” by Saul Williams.)