Shingo Tamagawa, an animator closely associated with the studio Sunrise, was afraid he’d start hating his drawings, and even the act of drawing, if he continued to pursue the path he was on. “No matter how hard your work,” he explains in the new documentary Three Minutes, Three Years: Making Puparia, “animation is something that is consumable.” Disillusioned, he stopped drawing for over a year.
In that time, ideas slowly started accumulating for a new short film. After three years of solo production, his three-minute indie film Puparia was completed. He released it in November on Youtube, where it has since been viewed more than a million times:
While the short itself is a gorgeous, meditative art piece, Three Minutes, Three Years: Making Puparia is also worthwhile. Recently released by Archipel, a Youtube channel dedicated to Japanese art and culture, the 20-minute doc gives an overview of Tamagawa’s career and the production of Puparia. It also offers fascinating insights into his mentality throughout the process, and his strong opinions about the state of animation as a commercial artform. Watch it below: