Official Selection

Japan 2021
Duration: 08:02
Directed by: Kenta Nomura
Animation: Kenta Nomura
Technique: Rotoscoping
Music: Sumio Kobayashi

Fingers that touch an instrument when playing music are not recognized by listeners. Similarly in animation, the existence of hands that draw the pictures is hidden from viewers. This work visualizes fingers and hands which are invisible in music and animation. This work is a visualization of a piano piece "Fugue - homage to Maurice Ravel" by Sumio Kobayashi, a composer of contemporary music. I created this animation by rotoscoping the footage of the performer's hands playing the piano. It was the rule to choose and draw the frames of the moment when the fingers press the keyboard and make a sound from the video shot at 30 frames per second. In drawing, I picked up the details of the parts rather than tracing the whole contours of the hands and fingers, and left undrawn blank frames between the drawn frames. I worked on drawing intermittently from February 2020 to August 2021, started from the beginning of the music and moved towards the end, and drew them just according to the shape and movement of the fingers in the video. In this way I transferred the music to images through drawing the fingers, and thus the movements and blinks of this animation arose out of the process.

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