Short Film of the Day - Kirsten Lepore's Mouth Watering "Sweet Dreams"

In all of about 10 minutes, Sweet Dreams – a short film by American animator Kirsten Lepore, transports you to a world completely fabricated and populated by food, making you laugh, cry and crave sweets all at once.

Sweet Dreams follows the exploits of a curious cupcake on his journey from his own candy-crafted land to an isle populated entirely with vegetables, then back again. The film’s set an characters were also made almost entirely from food – decorated by various sweets such as ice cream cones, sugar cubes and Liquorice (among others), while also featuring a Smorgasbord of vegetables.

The film – written, directed and animated by Kirsten Lepore, a young animator based in Los Angeles – was Lepore’s undergrad thesis project while at the Maryland Institute College of Art, taking her nine months to complete. The film sets nicely as the first in her ever-growing repertoire of stop motion films, her later short films entitled Bottle and Move Mountain, the latter of which was her graduate thesis while attending CalArts for her Masters in Fine Arts. It’s a unique and charming film, cementing Kirsten’s unique artist voice composed of solid character animation used to bring to life fun and whacky ideas.

You can go watch Sweet Dreams here on her Vimeo channel. There are also several interesting behind-the-scenes resources: a time-lapse of Kirsten building one of the beach sets over the course of 3.3 hours, a compilation of thirty videos – each ranging from one to two-and-a-half minutes – of Kirsten documenting her mood and the happenings of the day over the course of the last thirty days of animation on Sweet Dreams, an interview with Kirsten by KQED Arts, a video of Kirsten teaching some of the essential building-blocks of stop motion, and, lastly, various behind-the-scenes and making-of photos which Kirsten posted via her Flickr profile, several of which are posted below.

You can explore Kirsten’s work further via her website, Twitter, and Facebook.

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