The self-taught animator on collage, control and why fingers, hair and breasts are the most expressive things to draw and make move.
Most of us spend a lifetime trying to feel at home in our own skin. Sara Priorelli would rather pull it apart, stretch it and twist it to see how far it goes. Somewhere along the way, she finds comedy gold in what it means to be human.
The fifth of seven children, Sara grew up in a house surrounded by chaos and fun, along with an entire family of Basset Hounds. You can see all of that joy and madness in her animation work, where bodies distort, sag and bend into weird shapes – all with cartoonish glee. There’s no storyboard or script behind her ideas; it’s all built from memory and a constant stream of notes scribbled down – a handy archive that Sara says has never let her down.
Her route in wasn’t through animation at all, but collage. A teenage obsession with Hannah Höch’s photomontages and Terry Gilliam’s cut-out sequences led her to turn mismatched body parts into little monsters and try to make them move. That was way before she had the software or the skills to do it properly. She taught herself the rest – and it shows in the loose way she works.
The fascination with bodies, she says, is one she can’t fully explain. What she can trace is the discomfort underneath it. “Behind my obsession with playing around with the human body lies a certain discomfort of having one, and distorting and twisting it feels like a way of laughing off the awkwardness of being stuck in the same body for so long.”
There’s real pleasure in it, too. “It’s still incredibly fun to take control of a body and move it around as much as possible,” she says, and she has her favourite parts to draw: “Fingers, hair and breasts, because they are so expressive and fluid and constantly changing shape.” Even the Basset Hounds left their mark. “They carry way too much skin, and that makes their movement very expressive. I’m pretty sure their disproportion and cartoon-like appearance have unconsciously shaped my work.”
Having fun is far more important than efficiency.
Being self-taught shapes how she works as much as what she draws. “I never learned how to do it properly, and my files are always a mess,” she laughs. “Even in my longer projects, I rarely work with a storyboard, or a proper script, or a character design – which is probably why my characters look different in every frame.”
In her work, Sara constantly switches between digital animation, the light box and short comics. “Every medium has its limits, and changing those limits keeps my work challenging. If I get used to a certain approach, then I try another tool and it feels like starting from scratch.”
The light box, in particular, takes away her safety net. “I have to accept that there are no tricks like Ctrl+Z, and I like forcing myself to keep things simple and trust my hand a bit more.” Comics, on the other hand, ask something different again: “I like the challenge of making a static drawing dynamic, and a silent image loud.”
A piece rarely begins with a grand idea – more often, it’s a single detail that inspires her next artwork. “It usually starts with a very quick sketch of a detail, sometimes a shoe or just a funny posture, and that makes me think of a story or a particular movement.”
Place feeds the work as well. After the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, Sara took a master’s in Budapest, a move that left its mark on the tone of her storytelling. “I come from a small town, and I had dreamed of living in a big city for so long that, once there, I felt disappointed because my expectations had been so high.” That dissonance found its way onto the page. “The sense of being out of place, mixed with the excitement of the change, led me to push the bittersweet side of my stories even more.” A “sketchy” neighbourhood and a few surreal encounters supplied the cast. “I’m sure that shaped the kinds of characters I ended up using.”
Whatever tool she reaches for, Sara always draws frame by frame – even though it’s a lengthy process. “Having fun is far more important than efficiency. There’s something really satisfying about drawing every frame by hand, and of course, it gives me total control over the movement.” The imperfections are a feature, not a flaw. “I always try to bring a sense of irony to my work, and I feel that those technical imperfections add to the comedy of the movement.”
A working day is gentler than you might expect. “I spend my mornings sketching on paper while drinking coffee, then I go for a walk,” she says. “I come back home, scan the drawings, digitise them and start adding frames.” Music is non-negotiable, and she works with her notes and reference pictures close at hand.
What’s next is a return to playing. “I never really gave myself the time to experiment and explore more techniques, so I feel like I need to go back to that phase and take more breaks from my laptop.” One medium has her especially curious. “I’m super fascinated by paint-on-glass animation, so hopefully I’ll start sharing more of my experimental work in the next few months.”
As for who she returns to for inspiration, the answer is pretty specific. Her early hero was the Italian comics artist Altan: “His graphic novels had such a big impact on me that I still regularly go back and browse through his pages. I love the combination of nastiness and sensuality in his work.” And two classics stay on permanent rotation – Yellow Submarine and Bruno Bozzetto’s Allegro non troppo.
We’re big fans of Sara’s approach, and look forward to following her work. As for the awkwardness of having a body, it turns out it’s a lot more bearable when you’re the one pulling it out of shape.
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