Pigment of Imagination: Summary

Andy Macpherson's debut film Pigment of Imagination was produced as part of his final year course work at Edinburgh College of Art for a BA (Hons) degree in Visual Communication (specialising in Animation).
It is a 3 minute animated suspense film inspired by the work of Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, I Confess) and Jean-Luc Godard (Bande a Part, Alphaville), with many other eclectic influences helping to further enhance the unique style of the work.

The story follows a young woman searching for her lost beagle in a spooky old mansion, unaware of the psychotic artist lurking behind one of the many doors.

Produced over an 8 month period from November 2008-June 2009, the film utilised live-action referencing similar to A-Ha’s Take On Me music video, and was drawn with black ballpoint pen on A6 paper to create a vibrant and much-praised visual style.
The drawn animation frames interact with watercolour backgrounds that are painted under Expressionist influence in order to enhance the unique visual style of the overall film and break away from the constraints of modern commercial animation.
Further to this, digital shortcuts were kept to a bare minimum during the production of this film, and assistance from other people was restricted in order to keep the film looking as personal and as hand-made as possible. This makes the film look like a piece of traditional artwork and helps to counter the commercial industry’s reliance upon CGI for almost everything these days, which this director feels is ruining the magic of film and television.

A 30 second trailer for Pigment of Imagination is embedded below, and more of his video work is available to view on both his YouTube profile and Vimeo profile.


Pigment of Imagination premiered on Screen 1 of the Filmhouse cinema (Edinburgh), on Monday 15th June 2009 as part of the Edinburgh College of Art animation degree show 2009, and had a repeat screening on Tuesday 16th June 2009.

His full film (plus a small selection of portfolio work) was on display along with the work of another 12 animators and 400 other graduating artists as part of the Edinburgh College of Art 2009 degree show held from 13th-23rd June.


The full film will be available to view online late-2009...

UPDATE: Please click here to watch the full film on YouTube.