Hannah Vernon

Illustration and Animation - BA (Hons)

Hello! I’m Hannah, an illustrator and animator originally from Dublin.

I love creating pieces with a focus on storytelling and colour, often combining multiple methods of working to achieve a specific look. During my time at Cambridge School of Art, I’ve explored 2D illustration and animation, 3D modelling and model making, and enjoy finding new ways of incorporating elements of each of them in my work.

My graduate film ‘Opsis’ is a short animation about love and death featuring a diver and a coral reef.

I was inspired to make the film after watching the 2017 documentary ‘Chasing Coral’, in which a team of divers, ecologists and photographers around the world record and document the disappearance of coral reefs. They did this by capturing a time-lapse of the bleaching process over the course of a couple of months to demonstrate the severity of the issue.

To create a 3D virtual reality look, my film combines 2D animation with a physical set for the background. Live action clips were filmed inside the set as if from the diver’s point of view as he looks around the scene, and the 2D animated sea creatures were added afterwards. I hoped that this way of working would make the film more immersive, as I want the viewer to feel as shocked and heartbroken as the diver does as he realises what is happening to the reef.