The Seed, a film created for Adobe, is animator Johnny Kelly's first major project since he joined the roster of directors at Nexus shortly after we featured him as One To Watch in our September issue last year - and the animated film follows the life cycle of an apple seed...

“It was funded by Adobe,” explains Kelly, “and it was made with their spanking new range of fancy Creative Suite software: CS4. [Ad agency] Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco commissioned me to write, design and direct the film. It was a totally open brief.”

“I’d got a taste for paper craft when making my film Procrastination [which won Best in Book in last year’s CR Annual], and this seemed like the right project to give it another go,” Kelly says. “So everything was hand folded and glued. Myself and Elin Svensson, who helped assemble all the models, both had mangled fingers by the end of the project, covered in superglue and scalpel wounds: not a pretty sight.”

Seed is one of a campaign of films that Goodby has commissioned to show off the new features that Adobe has added to version four of the Creative Suite package that includes Photoshop, After Effects and Illustrator. 

Kelly's studio set up during the shoot

See Kelly's making of film, just uploaded to Vimeo: vimeo.com/2425610

See Adobe's site to find out more about Creative Suite 4: adobe.com/products/creativesuite