Contemporary Design

Stories of my family with forest and fungi

by Hanna Kutvonen
an illustrated family portrait
Character designs of all the interviewed family members

This project was about ideating animations based on the stories I collected from my family.

During the course I was thinking a lot about my own relationship with nature and the factors that have played a role in the process of creating that relationship. I think the most influential part of me growing up to appreciate nature so much comes from my family, especially my grandparents. Since I was little, I have spent time with my grandparents, from both sides of the family, at their summer cottages, and we have gone fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, seal spotting trips and other nature adventures together. I also enjoy listening the stories they tell me about their own adventures and encounters with nature.

I decided to ask from my family members to share their stories with me and use them as a base for animations. During the relatively short time we had to create our projects, I developed character designs of the family members I interviewed, and made some of the stories into story boards that I will later use to make the animations.

The stories I collected were quite personal for my family members so for now I decided to share just the illustrations and the storyboards I made and not the detailed stories here on Contemporary Design’s website.

The Stories of My Family

an illustrated image of grandpa with a dog and a bird
Character design of grandpa (dad’s dad)
an illustrated storyboard of grandpa's story
Storyboard based on grandpa’s story
an illustration of grandma with some forest souveniers
Character design of grandma (dad’s mom)
an illustrated storyboard of grandma's story
Storyboard based on grandma’s story
an illustration of grandma
Character design of grandma (mom’s mom)
an illustrated storyboard based on grandma's story
Storyboard based on grandma’s story
an illustration of mom character
Character design of mom
an illustrated storyboard based on mom's story
Storyboard based on mom’s story
an illustrated image of dad and brother characters
Character designs of dad and brother
an illustration of sister and her twin children
Character designs of sister and her twins

Oyster mushroom animation

This is a small animation I made inspired by oyster mushrooms.

During the course we got our own oyster mushroom growing kits from Helsieni. It was exciting to follow the growth of first the mycelium and then the fruiting bodies. One of the things I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, is animation. When watching the growth of the oyster mushrooms, I had the idea of making a cute animation of the process.

In the past I have made small stop motion animations with clay and paper etc. but I had never done traditional drawn animation before. It took me almost twenty hours of work to create 35 seconds of animation. It was A surprisingly slow process, but I had fun making it, and I learned a lot. For drawings I used Procreate on iPad Pro and created the final animation with Adobe Premiere Pro. I think my animation skills can only get better (and hopefully faster) from here!

Enjoy!

Watch video
Illustrations and Animation: Hanna Kutvonen, Sounds: freesound.org
a work in progress of an animation of fungi growing
Layer image of the outlining
  • Published:
  • Updated: