‘A flock of roosting crows, black as night themselves, are threatened by the advancing shadows at dusk. They need light for protection so with the help of the Raven Chief they take a piece of the sun and use it to save themselves from the darkness.’

I made this short film in 2006 with BBC Scotland and National Lottery funding. I had worked on the film storyboards over a number of months and decided to create the film using traditional animation methods.

This meant buying a huge supply of punched animation paper as well as tracking down increasingly rare boxes of animation cell!

The film took 8 months to create and was all hand drawn on paper first, tested, adjusted and then edited. Once happy with how the film was looking, every image had to be hand painted on cell with black acrylic, then processed to create the light effect. This was around 9000 paintings and thankfully I managed to enrol the help of a team of animation students from the Edinburgh College of Art who were an incredible help! The film was then filmed using a multi-plane – a wooden frame with layers of glass, studio lighting and other bizzare effects such as pieces of tin foil, blobs of oil and some oil paint.

I worked alongside Leila Dunn who created a fabulous piece of original music for the film.

It has been screened at over 25 festivals worldwide including the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, The Ottawa International Animation Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival.