Art & Graft sign up top animation talent for new autism charity project

Last year Art and Graft charmed our socks off with a short animation promoting Cornish autism charity Spectrum and so inspired were they by the organisation’s amazing work that they’ve been back – and this time they took some friends. They asked four of the best animators around – Mikey Please, Matthias Hoegg, Kristian Andrews and UFO – to create four portraits of individuals whose lives had been turned around by Spectrum (and they also made another piece themselves).

The five pieces, released today, are all quite different, ranging from Mattthias’ explosion of colour and music to UFO’s darker effort, Mikey’s look at a little-known condition that affects autism sufferers to Art & Graft’s effective mix of animation and video. But my favourite is Kristian’s film Michelle which really captures some of his subject’s anxieties.

All the filmmakers visited the charity and spent time with the people they were featuring and they came together for group crits over a few beers. The results are superb –moving but not mawkish, inspiring but not heavy-handedly so, affecting and effective. It’s hard to imagine a more worthy use of creative talent.