César Pelizer animates your daydreams at work in Looking for Something

“The idea came a long time ago when I was about 18 years old and living in Argentina,” explains illustrator and animator César Pelizer of his latest personal venture, Looking For Something. “I was working in a boring part-time desk job and I would do anything to look busy even though I had my eyes half closed for a good part of the day.”

Coming in just short of four minutes, the animation tells the surreal journey of a man searching for the meaning of life and answers within his own consciousness. Opening with a man (whose long purple neck is a feature we’ve come to recognise in César’s work) sat at his desk on a Tuesday morning, the somewhat bored and disillusioned character proceeds to have “a wake-up call”. From here, his world turns upside-down, travelling through a series of weird and unexpected scenarios, all narrated with dry humour and wit, as he searches for the meaning of the word “meaning”.

Aesthetically, Looking for Something switches between scenes full of detail and ones which place the protagonist in vast amounts of undisturbed space; a grid often forming the basis of such scenes. “The narrative is very abstract – it doesn’t make sense,” César explains of the video’s jump cuts. “I was trying to remain loyal to the definition of daydreaming, where the character experiences short-term detachment from his surroundings and the contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy.”

The short film was produced by weareseventeen the studio where César previously worked as an animation director. “I had started this project at home in my free time and once I had finished the script I pitched the idea to George and Steve (founders of weareseventeen),” he recalls. “They were very supportive and decided to produce the film, allowing me to work on it between commercial jobs.”