When I came across Very Pulse of The Machine
I was immediately drawn to it
It had a really strong female protagonist
Martha's journey is really going from an individual
who's just trying to survive
into embracing that she may not be in control of the situation.
She's thinking logically,
but she's not thinking emotionally
because she can't have space for that right now, because she's in shock.
And so I actually made the feminine stuff
in the external world around her,
and she's fighting against that
as she's pushing through and trying to stay in control.
Inside this survival thriller, was this more meditative story.
It was like this pilgrimage across the desert and meeting
a being that's bigger than yourself.
I really wanted to make something that was a love letter to Moebius.
Jean Giraud Moebius was one of the founding artists of
Heavy Metal Magazine.
Several times I would just play music and
close the door and just kind of draw a feeling.
In the short story, it describes
these pillars start to look like women, and they begin to dance.
That's as far as it went.
And for me, I wanted to create a full experience around that.
I intended those to be an homage to Moebius again.
The film is a journey from day to night,
to reflect Martha's changing perspective on what she thinks
life really is and her own sense of life.
Io, the moon of Jupiter is a sulfurous moon.
Sulfur is when it's solid is yellow but when it burns, it burns blue.
One thing, one element can be two different appearances.
I felt like it tied into the theme.
The pandemic hit and
all the animators were working from home,
they had to figure out how to animate
this female astronaut walking across the surface of Io.
Without any reference, it was very difficult.
So I ended up going to the beach in Santa Monica.
Just to show how the body moves when it's interacting with sand and the difficulty.
It's very exhausting, actually.
It was really helpful for them to see how
that all works and just to get the posing right.
That final leap that Martha does when she sacrifices herself,
I wanted a specific line of action, and the only way
to really do it, was for me to perform it in the end.
You gotta do what you gotta do, you know?
Polygon Pictures had the technical and artistic craftsmanship
that I was really looking for, and I felt had the potential to push
the technology to develop this Moebius-inspired look.
I'm so grateful that they agreed to be a part of this film.
Working in adult animation, and Love, Death & Robots in particular,
is so exciting.
You're really pushing the boundaries of what animation can do. You're really
helping audiences open their minds to see that animation isn't a genre.
It's a medium for telling stories.