In Our Own Hands

In Our Own Hands is a short stop-motion animated film we wrote and produced ourselves in May and June 2026. It complements our book Designing Creative Tools, exploring the impact creative tools have had on the emergence of new creative processes and, by extension, on culture.

Some stories may be well known, such as the role of the paint tube in the birth of Impressionism. Others will come as a delightful surprise, such as how Japanese volcanoes have shaped what a modern party looks and sounds like!

Mirroring the subject matter, our own creative process benefited from plenty of trial and error, along with multiple iterations. Over six weeks of production, we made more than 100 paper models, each becoming increasingly intricate (77 of them feature in the film). The complexity of the shots evolved, too; the final four-deck DJ set animation alone took a full day to shoot and another to edit.