may 2024
stop motion // zine
A contribution to Kriti Aggarwal’s graduation project on language and expression, this zine and short animation explore how communication can unfold beyond words, through silence, gesture, and shared experience.
Concept
This zine and animation were created as part of my senior, Kriti Aggarwal's graduation project centred on language not only as a linguistic tool, but as a carrier of identity, memory, and cultural resonance. The project asked what it means to communicate beyond words: in silence, through the body, through shared experience. With outcomes spanning a film, a publication, and a performance, the work invited audiences to explore how expression can be deeply personal yet universally felt.
Images shot by Kriti Aggarwal, Anurag Dasgupta and Alina Khatri, edited by Sanjana Sarah Paul
process
As part of this exploration into language beyond words, I created two pieces that responded to different aspects of the project: a stop-motion animation that engages with the idea of silent presence, and a zine that extends the experience of the performance into a physical reflection of internal dialogue and shared emotion.
Stop motion film
Set to a silent video of the senior’s grandmother looking directly at the camera, this 119-frame stop-motion animation was made using coloured printouts, oil pastels, and hand-done textures. Some frames took a lot of time which involved physically cutting, pasting, and reworking elements, making the process slow, but grounding. The rough, frame-by-frame style holds on to the quiet intensity of her gaze, where even the smallest movements feel loaded. It became a way to think through memory and unspoken emotion, like a conversation that doesn’t need words to be felt.
Images shot by Kriti Aggarwal, Anurag Dasgupta and Alina Khatri, edited by Sanjana Sarah Paul
The zine was developed as a reflective artefact for an immersive movement-based performance. Designed to evoke internal dialogue and shared emotional space, it visually traces the journey of self-acceptance through connection. The layout and imagery mirror the performance’s fluid, non-verbal storytelling.
Zine
