Three kilograms of plasticine, a week and a half of sleepless nights, an endless resource of emotion, and a desire to create. Those were the things needed by students of Adalbert Erdeli Uzhhorod College of Art to create a sensual plasticine clip to the “Lullaby,” a song by Ukrainian indie rock band Vivienne Mort.
The essence of the clip is a sad bedtime story for a little boy, whose daddy “flew into space” from the war in the East, and who is left alone with his mother. Within days the animation has been viewed by more than 45,000 visitors from around the world, and this is just a start. The Day talked with the authors, Vladyslava Mazur and Solomia Kovalchuk. The students could not even imagine that their work would become so popular.
“We have long thought on how to combine art with music. Originally, we planned to draw a cartoon, but then deemed it difficult and too long; we only had 10 days, and it would have not been enough for this. After more thinking and discussions, we decided to model the clip with clay,” says Mazur. “We looked up on the Internet how to do it, and as we tried, we saw that we could manage. Originally, we thought that modeling itself would be the hardest part. However, shooting and editing turned out to be more difficult.”
In total, seven people were involved in creating the clip, the girls say. Having received the permission to use the song from the original performers, the students wanted to play it on the piano, but Vladyslava had an injury and it did not happen. “I like the song, it is very emotional,” says Kovalchuk. “Almost immediately we began to create the plot, work on sketches. Vladyslava stayed with me, and we had to work on the clip even at night. Step by step we drew all the sketches, then worked with the plasticine. We made everything without any special equipment in a makeshift studio, located in one of the college’s offices.”
When asked how much modeling clay was spent on making the video, Solomia responds: “It required almost three kilos of plasticine. Originally, we had 10 packs of colored plasticine, then we bought some white to mix it, in order to create different shades of the colors. I am the chairman of the student council, and all of our modest budget, which is 300 hryvnias collected from students, was spent on plasticine,” she laughs.
With this clip the girls won the competition “Best Student of Transcarpathia.” According to the students, they did not expect such a positive reception from Internet users. “We are simply amazed by the huge number of hits. At first I uploaded the video to the social network for those students who could not come to the competition and see it on the presentation. And after the teacher’s husband suggested to put it on Youtube, there were thousands of hits. We are pleased that we were able to reach the hearts of the people,” says Kovalchuk.
The success has inspired the students to new ideas. Solomia discusses her plans: “We want to make something bigger than a clip – a complete cartoon, the elements would not be reused. There are approximately six months until the nationwide contest ‘Best Student of Ukraine,’ thus we have the time and desire to work. I think the cartoon’s length will be approximately five minutes.”
For the first five days, the clip by Vladyslava Mazur, Solomia Kovalchuk, Sofia Vats, Tamara Dovhanych, and Tetyana Liakh, has been viewed from more than 30 countries. You can also find it on Youtube using the link: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=J6uIah1SXnc.
