Grotesque student animation shows us what can go wrong in a doctor’s waiting room (NSFW)

A group of students from the The Animation Workshop of VIA University College in Denmark have created this brilliantly grotesque animation that takes place in a doctor’s waiting room. Titled Cream, the short is a graduation film from director Lena Ólafsdóttir and animators Stina Willadsen, Kristian Olesen, Jonas Scott Di Hu and Marie Erkisen

Each element of the film has been made by hand, with puppets and clay being used to create the stop motion animation. The film starts in a doctor’s waiting room where “soothing music and the opportunity to enjoy an ice cream brings about an alleviating atmosphere”. The group describe the film as revealing the “cold and ugly sides of human nature” as the story meanders through birth, death and the “absurdity of life”. At times it’s an uncomfortable watch, with gruesome characters behaving in vile ways, yet it’s executed so well it’s hard to stop watching. 

The story mainly takes place from an ariel perspective aping that of a CCTV camera, and the film mixes up its pace by interspersing closer crops, such as the guy licking ice cream or the old woman pulling on the other woman’s hair. It’s here we see the costumes created by Mary-Ann Hansen and the finer details of the clay figures, revealing the time spent and the impressive skill of these graduating students.