‘Still Life,’ An Enchanting Experiment In Replacement Animation By Conner Griffith [Video]

L.A.-based experimental animator Conner Griffith has released his latest short Still Life, an enchanting experiment in replacement animation.

Like leafing through the pages of an old catalog found in a grandparent’s basement, Still Life is a nostalgia trip, even if the viewer was born decades after its images were first produced.

For Still Life, Griffith scanned and processed over 1,400 prints from various historical sources. The images flow from one to the next with such aesthetic fidelity that a viewer could be forgiven for concluding that they were created for this short, but that’s not the case.

Instead, Griffith collected the images from engravings that were originally produced in the 19th century for visual dictionaries, shopping catalogs, instruction manuals, and scientific documents. The engraving techniques used to create the images varied, but most were made using either woodcut or metal plate engraving.

“The artists themselves are often not directly credited in these archives,” explains Griffith. “We’re left with an …