Joe Bichard animates an exercise in self compassion for The School of Life

In an animation for Alain de Botton’s School of Life, Joe Bichard drew the daily life of a down-trodden character and their plight to will a little self-compassion. With a colour palette reminiscent of a pack of highlighter pens and simple line work, the story and humour come through in the interactions of the protagonist with both real people and her ever-present demons. On working out the tone for the animation, Joe says: “Alain’s words cover some pretty serious stuff, so naturally I thought I’d try and counter that by adding a bit of humour to the whole thing.”

The details in the moments of solitude, such as farting in the bath and self-flagellation are brilliantly timed for comic effect, as is the drowning of the figure of self-hatred in a cup of tea handed to her from a dismembered arm in the sky. The sound design is by Skillbard, who took the Sonic the Hedgehog theme tune as inspiration. Immediately our minds turned, as they tend to, towards the sound of tortoises having sex,” Skillbard says. They wrote chord progressions for the music, mixed synth sounds using duvets, made fart noises by sticking their heads in the bath and constructed a DIY duck caller using a plastic straw. Joe says that “Alain wanted it to feel nice and warm and light,” which it does whilst managing to impart some important lessons on failure, luck and success.