Washi - Blay Studio

PROJECT

Washi

YEAR

2022

CATEGORY

Art

SYNOPSIS

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On the occasion of the Imadate Art Fair in the prefecture of Echizen in Japan, JM Blay was invited to create an audiovisual piece for an art exhibition for the Echizen Museum. The exhibition was about Japanese handmade paper as always, but this year was the first time they were inviting artists from different artistic disciplines to show their view of Washi using their own visual narratives.

The piece JM created, is a free interpretation of the ancient hand made process that is Washi. He approached this as an experimental project, finding a narrative in the journey that is the process of paper making. JM abridged the steps he thought were more interesting to show, focusing on the natural materials and the paper rather than the human action.

The way of making this paper is like a ceremony, almost spiritual, and more related to the gods than humans. This vision led him to create an oneiric piece about the making of Washi.

Flying branches interacting with each other, a drop of water starting the process, boiling strips of bark, an emerging sheet of paper from the water... This is the narrative JM used in this piece. Almost like small interlocked stories about the materials that give them the importance they have.

PROCESS

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Our founder and creative director JM Blay spent almost a year (in between projects) to create this animation. He enjoyed the whole process very much as it was very experimental and free. JM had lots of fun testing weird simulations and crazy ideas just to see how it would look.

During the process, JM made a bunch of tests of different approaches for every shot.

Washi is a solo project, JM created it by himself, using Cinema 4D and After Effects, the main tools he always uses when he produce projects. The primary plugins JM utilised to create this piece were X-Particles and Red Giant, and everything was rendered with Redshift.