Elliot the Bull - Colourblind

Oh yeah wow has to be one of my favourite design companies that I have researched because of the really unique characters they create and animate from wooden bulls to wooly urban octopus. This film they created for Elliot and the Bull's music video 'Colourblind' and has a really interesting narrative. We see the birth of a small wooden bull who has the power to create; to draw trees and platforms from the ground with the flick of his wrist. He is initially surprised with his ability and after trying it out he expands his ambitions and his world grows around him. I think this is very much a story about creativity, about how when you first start out you don't know what you can achieve but through continual work you can create whole works of your imagination. You really feel like the creators of this film love this character, as they imbue him with this childish wonder and naivety, through little tilts of his head like this (shown below) when he doesn't understand something. I think this character is the personification of everybody's creative hearts that look and make new exciting things. 

However it is this sweet character's inquisitiveness that brings his doom. By touching a black square a bigger bull is created, who has the opposite power of destruction. I think it is interesting how this new character is animated because he does not seem malevolent or that he is enjoying destruction, he seems weary with his sloped shoulders and heavy slow steps. I think this reluctance is supposed to communicate the inevitability of destruction, how whatever you build, it can always be torn down. Maybe a warning to artists, that nothing is immortal, just like their creators, creations can be destroyed. With this in mind it is interesting that the creator bull looks straight into the destroyers eyes when he himself is about to be destroyed. He looks resigned to his fate, again the same inevitability of his ending before being reduced to a pile of triangles.

 I think this film discusses the conflict between creation and destruction, and their interdependence with each other. Sometimes things need to be destroyed before new ideas can bloom. Or maybe they examining how the destruction of art can be art in itself, can there be the same power of communication in destruction that there is in creation? The ending is ambiguous and unhopeful, the larger bull has nothing left to destroy and so is surrounded by a dark abyss and so looks out gloomily with his bright eyes. To me the ending suggests that destruction is not communicative or beautiful only empty, it can only lead to reducing ideas and creativity, and so everyone suffers.