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Wobbly, semi-transparent beasties skitter around a real South American jungle in animated short La Cena, the latest eerily beautiful creation by Brazilian filmmakers Ygor Marotta and Ceci Soloaga. The innovative stop-motion film, premiering exclusively above, was made by projecting colorful, hand-drawn images of a snake and other creatures frame by frame onto an actual watering hole in Delta Tigre near Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“We used a long exposure of the camera to capture the drawings with a little bit of moonlight,” Soloaga said in an e-mail interview with Wired.com talking about the video, which casts a weirdly hypnotic spell.

Produced by Antonio Balseiro, La Cena “represents nature and the circle of life,” said Soloaga. The film’s whimsical, handcrafted vibe also represents a departure from the type of hard-edged urban mapping projects that have blossomed over the past few years. Mapping — in which flat, precisely sized imagery is projected onto three-dimensional architectural structures — has become a fixture at geeky art events in Europe.

London collective Seeper, for example, projected geometric figures against the wall of 1,000-year-old Rochester Castle (and soundtracked the display to thunderous hard rock) during its ACDC Versus Iron Man event. Czech trio Macula encased a Liverpool museum with dancing cubes. And Germany’s Urban Screen used its “Lumentektur” mapping technique to envelop an Austrian museum in a 3-D skin reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s angular, crazy-quilt aesthetic.

“Mapping is really popular now but we haven’t seen this technique being used to tell a narrative history,” Soloaga said. “Usually what you see is a 3-D aesthetic, white lines and deconstruction of buildings. We wanted to do something different by using traditional animation and organic content.”

Known collectively as vjsuave, former art student Marotta, 25, and self-taught techie Soloaga, 29, met in Soloaga’s native Argentina three years ago and quickly arrived at a division of labor. Marotta specializes in analog arts and crafts, including character design, watercolors and animation. Soloaga handles the digital side of the process, working with Adobe Flash and AfterEffects to craft animation, video and mapping components. They share direction, writing and storyboard duties.

The inspiration for La Cena came during a vacation in the wilds. “We were in the middle of nature and during the nights we heard animals’ noises,” Soloaga said. “We couldn’t tell if it was a rat-dog or a crocodile-frog, so we created these imaginary native animals like frog and dragonfly, crocodile and raccoon, dog-rat and snake, deer and darkness monsters.”

Marotta and Soloaga previously showcased their mapping aesthetic to brilliant effect with Homeless, embedded below, which they made on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil.

“We created a camera car with a projector attached to reproduce moving scenes,” Soloaga said. “Then we searched for locations and created a story about two people who live in the streets. We wanted to show their dreams and hopes for freedom and search for love while they face the chaos of the city.” (The fusion of analog and digital skills is deconstructed in this Homeless “making of” video).

The pair’s films have so far compressed loads of charm into a small amount of time, but the filmmakers hope to go long with their next project, a feature-length piece using stop-motion, mapping and moving-projection techniques.

The theme will be consistent with their previous works, Soloaga said: “We believe in endless love, respect, acts of kindness toward everybody and the ludic universe of dreams.”

via Wired.com