The inspiration for this project was a desire to bring to life quotes from great New Zealand authors.
Created by Storybox and National Park the project was commissioned by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage for New Zealand ‘ s involvement as Guest of Honour at the 2012 Frankfurt Book F air. The quotes were chosen by Witi Ihimaera and structured to emulate the welcome onto a Marae.
“We wanted to take the essence of each quote and give it a simple yet elegant visual metaphor”, says director Robert Appierdo from Storybox.
The final result is a combination of illustration, stop motion and motion graphics animating the words of, Katherine Mansfield, Patricia Grace, Michael King, Selina Tusitala, Witi Ihimaera, Magret Mahy, Hone Tuwhare, Hirini Melbourne, Bill Manhire and traditional Maori whakatautki.
Designed specifically for a German audience it has subtitles and was screened to an audience of worldwide press in Frankfurt earlier this month.
“The German response was incredible, we’ve had requests from widespread German media to screen the animation – people love it. It says a lot about our creativity and the success of our literature internationally” , says Guest of Honour Project Director Tanea Heke.