Animation: It's Called Moon recreates the effect of trying to sleep after taking melatonin

You know that weird limbo that occurs halfway between sleep and wakefulness where you can see hundreds of tiny images flickering over the insides of your eyelids in very quick succession but you don’t know quite how to describe it? Imagine that sensation enhanced 100-fold by a strong dose of sleep hormone melatonin, and then imagine trying to recreate the vision with animation. Tricky, no? This is exactly what Emanuele Kabu does with It’s Called “Moon”.

The animation grows and transforms steadily over the course of the short, in accompaniment to rhythmic, trance-like music, with each visual effect more impressive than the one before. Dream-like and meditative, the piece says as much about the frustrating monotony of not being able to get to sleep as it does about the effect of the drug, all of which makes for a transfixing viewer experience.