Earthling Ed

Animated Short Film

When

Who

What

2022

Surge Media / Earthling Ed

Animated Short Film

Blood is thicker than milk

A glimpse inside the tragic life of a dairy cow

The short film tells the story of a UK dairy cow and depicts some of the horrific events that are standard practice within the dairy industry.

Investigate-style footage shot on farms serves an essential purpose in uncovering the reality. However, it's often difficult to convey a narrative from the perspective of the individual animals. By making a cinematic, fully CG animated film, we could tell the story through the eyes of the victims. This empathetic approach to activism will enable more people to understand the true nature of the dairy industry in a more personal way.

Character design

Looking into the eyes of a mother

A lot of effort went into creating the perfect appearance and aesthetic for our main protagonist, the mother cow. We conducted on-site research at a farm to study the physical characteristics and appearance of real cows.

Ensuring the authenticity of the lead character's look was crucial for the audience to empathize with her tragic fate. The character model was carefully crafted and refined through multiple iterations until we achieved a balance between photorealism and a more stylized design.

View it in full here

A film for the forgotten

Motion Capture

One actor to play
them all

SMASH's very own Alex and Ash headed over to Hazelight Studio in Stockholm to record all the human animations for the film using motion capture technology.

This method provided incredibly realistic and natural movements for the characters and greatly accelerated the animation process in comparison to traditional keyframe animation techniques.