The Hunter

This is a short clip from the stop motion sand animation The Hunter by director, writer and animator Marieka Walsh.

A boy goes missing in the icy wilderness, feared taken by wolves. A hunter undertakes a journey to find the boy, dead or alive.

As the hunter tracks the boy into the mountains, he discovers that his instincts can no longer be trusted. Here, far from civilisation he must make decisions that will forever change his relationship with the wilderness he has always feared.

Combining sand and stop motion creates a distinctive illustrative technique. Marieka Walsh manipulates her materials to create playful interactions between with light and shade to generate a depth of tone.

The animation was created with a piece of glass cut to size, cardboard, sand, brushes, ceramic tools and her hands and was shot on an Oxberry model 6, a 35mm animation camera from the 1960s.