Shingo Tamagawa’s three-minute animation Puparia, is a stunning artwork that took three years to create. The journey to make the film is woven into the piece itself. Tamagawa began making Puparia after a period of reflection on why he was involved in the animation industry, working at Sunshine studio. Tired of the process of justifying one’s work as a consumable item, and worried he’d stop enjoying the very act of drawing, he took time off to rethink his career, but also, to reconnect with what he loved about animation. The result was a choice to independently create a film exploring the shifts in his perception of the societal changes that signalled values and a world fading away; his own emotional journey of a year spent wandering around and doing very little while trying to figure out how to move forward with his life, and reconnecting with the joy of creating itself. Using colour hand drawings that were scanned and then digitally composed, Tamagawa wanted to engage the viewer in this abstract journey by making the characters and surroundings clear, direct and relatable, while simultaneously creating a dream-like, metaphysical artwork.

“Puparia” is the plural of puparium, which is the final larval stage of a fly’s metamorphosis where the exoskeleton is hardened. The film’s meditative and mesmerising quality has a sense of unfolding; of meeting the unknown; of evolving or perhaps shifting into a new way of being. Tamagawa spoke about his motivation to create Puparia: “I make animation to create new things and generate new emotions that I haven’t felt before. I believe everybody has that joy inside of them. I think the whole industry could be happier if we could pivot in that direction, just a little more.”

In the notes to the video, Tamagawa adds this: “Something is about to change drastically We can only be witnesses to it.”