Ellen Bartlett - "Restoration"

About the Artist:

Ellen Bartlett currently works as Lead Artist and lead character animator at AfroDuck Studios, a start-up indie gaming company based in Columbus.  She plans on using media like gaming and film to express her artistry, interests, and to share meaningful messages to audiences.

www.ellencbartlett.com

Instagram: @ec_bart (https://www.instagram.com/ec_bart/)

Twitter: @bart_ec (https://twitter.com/bart_ec)

Youtube: EC Bart (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWkmWIuHx4)

Vimeo: Ellen Bartlett (https://vimeo.com/user78867244)

 


 

Restoration

Animated Film, 2020, 2 min 55 sec

Bartlett Restoration Film Still 0

 

“Restoration” is an animation regarding climate change.  Recently, I have felt entirely helpless in the state of our planet.  Biodiversity is threatened by a mass extinction and our practices are unsustainable.  The first people to be affected by climate change are people living in close relations to nature and their ecosystems.  This includes the Indigenous people of the Americas withstanding persistent droughts and fires, and Australian aboriginal people who faced bush fires, earlier this year, threatening the island's unique marsupial dominated land.

People, animals, and vegetation are threatened by humanity's over-consumption of Earth's resources.

 

Now, humanity is facing a global pandemic from the COVID-19 outbreak.  This recent development altered my view of the work as well.  With the outbreak, air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have lowered.  People are confined to their homes during the Stay-At-Home orders.

 

We currently live in a time of global threats, and something positive should be made.  My animation is about a world post climate change.  The planet is recovering and the abundant carbon in the air is now personified and roams the world giving energy and growth new life.  Humanity lives in bubble towers fully sustainable for their living needs.  These bubble towers are how people protect the planet now.  They have removed themselves from nature to allow Earth to balance itself.  Yet, this isolation from nature is not for everyone.

 

            The animation follows a little girl who has grown up in these bubbles with her family. She dreams of reconnecting with nature and joining the carbon creatures. No one in her family has ever set foot on Earth's soil. She dreams of rejoining nature and the Earth, and she decides that is what she will do. ​