Sucked Up

Sucked Up (2003) is a 6-minute 40-second animated short film exploring the formation of male sexuality from childhood through to adult intimacy. The film follows a boy and girl whose childhood play gives way to the disorientation of puberty — rendered through surreal, bodily imagery including fallopian moths and displaced anatomy — before tracing their path through failed sexual encounter and eventually into sustained emotional and physical connection.

The work employs a hybrid production method combining computer animation (3ds Max), live-action DV blue-screen compositing (Discreet Combustion), and multiple digital image-processing treatments, creating a deliberately unstable visual register that shifts between animation styles to mirror the psychological turbulence of its subject matter. Sound design by Oliver Davis and a script by Camille Brooks support a narrative that moves between the legible and the deliberately impenetrable, using visual excess and stylistic disruption as expressive strategies rather than conventional storytelling devices.

Produced through the animate! scheme (Finetake for Arts Council England and Channel 4), Sucked Up was Cresser's first project as sole director, following collaborative work with Tim Hope on Coldplay music videos and Origen's Wake (C4 Comedy Lab, 2001) with Waen Shepherd. The film was broadcast on Channel 4 in 2003 and screened at Edinburgh International Film Festival and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, amongst other festivals. It was shortlisted for a British Animation Award in the Films at the Cutting Edge category. Distribution by LUX, London.

• https://animateprojectsarchive.org/films...
• https://lux.org.uk/work/sucked-up/