Compost Creative were approached to work on the animation sequences for the feature documentary North Korea: Inside the Mind of a Dictator, produced by 72 Films for National Geographic. A factual documentary that was very short on footage to illustrate the gripping and sometimes wild stories about the Kim dynasty, it required over fifteen minutes of original narrative animation. I was the project lead for Compost, directing, designing and animating the majority of the sequences independently, and additionally directing a team of three animators and one graphic designer during the final few weeks of production.

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The project’s ambitious scope required a 2.5d approach to turn around all the animation in three months: making a virtue of this constraint, the art direction employed collage-style imagery composed within a more atmospheric 3d space, and used traditional cinematographic tricks in that world to achieve the production value we wanted. With the stories covering some grave subject matter as well as some more lightweight content (and nothing in between), the style was infused with visual humour and satire, yet could accommodate slick journalistic content where required.