Inspired by nature, 7 artists in 4 countries create one trippy 2-minute film

Last year we braved the outsized damage that one of the most minute forms of life, a virus, unleashed; the world faced unprecedented wildfires and floods; and from our quarantine bubbles, watched the miracle of sourdough bloom or a backyard garden take root. 

It’s from this emotional vantage point that HP asked seven talented designers, animators, and graphic artists — the Z by HP Global Ambassadors — to create something wholly original inspired by the natural world. 

Their challenge: it had to be produced with Z by HP gear and it had to be truly collaborative, while they were all in their home studios far apart in New York, Portugal, the Netherlands, Colombia, and Idaho. The goal of the project was to see how creatives can collaborate from a distance with the Z by HP Ambassadors experimenting with new tools and techniques and pushing HP’s high-performance workstations and monitors to their limits. 

“All these different types of artists come together to create a single project, it sounds so overwhelming because you’re just like, how are we going to make this work?” says Jody MacDonald (@jodymacdonaldphoto), an adventure and documentary photographer and Z Ambassador based in Sun Valley, Idaho.

But it did work — beautifully. The result, The Living System, is a mesmerizing two-minute short film that debuted this month ahead of Earth Day. It maps out a surrealist, psychedelic journey inspired by nature — where microscopic organisms zip through primordial seas, rainbow-hued crystals sprout from a Mars-like rocky desert, wispy clouds coalesce into a lone tree, and a Brooklyn neighborhood becomes a tropical jungle as it joyfully explodes with flowering plants.   

“There’s this longing to be outdoors, and for nature, and to get out of the four walls that you’re stuck within and break free a bit,” says Shane Griffin (@grif), an Irish visual artist and director based in New York. “I wanted to capture that.” 

Collaborating from a distance

The artists had a range of new software, new workflows, and devices like the HP ZBook Create notebook PC, HP DreamColor Studio Displays, and the HP Z4 Desktop at their disposal. They also depended on collaboration tools we all know: Zoom calls that spanned several time zones, WeChats, and file-sharing sites.

Those early calls had a lot of uncertainty.   

“It’s challenging personally to collaborate with fellow artists, because everybody has different tastes, everybody has different opinions, everybody has different ambitions,” says Rik Oostenbroek (@rikoostenbroek), an illustrator and art director based in the Netherlands. “What are we going to create together to make something we’re all happy with?”

Eventually, the group began to gel.

“We realized that everyone has something related to nature,” says Nidia Dias (@imnidiadias), a 3D designer and art director based in Portugal. “We thought, ‘okay, this is getting somewhere.’”

A common thread

When the team agreed on a throughline — a story of evolution that grows from the simplest forms of life (protozoa) to the macro (a teeming city) — they found the much-needed structure. “We really wanted to feel from start to end that it’s one full piece,” explains Dias. 

The give-and-take required to mesh different styles was itself a source of inspiration, says Alex Trochut (@trochut), a Spanish-born experimental typeface designer and illustrator based in New York. “When I'm working with other people you need to adapt, and when you adapt you change, and these changes always tell you something about yourself,” he explains.

New tools, new skills

What followed is a relay-style creative endeavor over four months, with each artist handing off their work to the next and figuring out natural points of transition between their individual pieces.

MacDonald, for example, used a Maverick drone to capture a bird’s-eye view of mountains in Arizona, Dias used point cloud data to create a 3D visualization of a tree, and Trochut experimented with sculpting in VR.

“We played upon our strengths,” says Orlando Arocena (@mexifunk), a vector artist and graphic designer based in Colombia. “We looked at how diverse we are individually and we wanted to use that.” 

Creating together also pushed them to try new things to realize their visions. 

“All of the ambassadors went in and learned new techniques for this project,” says Bradley “Gmunk” Munkowitz (@gmunk), a visual design director based in Berkeley, California, who said he learned three new pieces of software to create swirling 3D animations that look a bit like lava. “That was the point, was to be uncomfortable, and to kind of go in and find our way.”

In the end, the team was proud of what they accomplished, and hope others could see that the result of this collaborative effort was much more than the sum of its parts.

“There’s so much possible within this new world we’re living in,” says Oostenbroek. “We were working in different time zones, with different software, with all different  perspectives. And it really amazed me in the end, especially after seeing the result. I feel like people could be inspired by that.”

RELATED: How a composition comes together when the musicians are apart. Watch The Way We Work Now: Creating together, in isolation.