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5-10 minute read or the time it takes to steep a cup of tea.

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    Note: This audio includes a mix of the original audio and audio descriptions of the commissioned video.


    Echoes of Essence

    Filmmaker and animator Jonni Peppers takes us on a journey through the intricate and whimsical process behind her independent series, The Blindfold. Over the past eight years, she has crafted a unique storytelling approach, making deliberate choices about the tools and techniques she employs for worldbuilding. In this video, Peppers showcases her distinctive animation style, which captures the emotional states of her characters while blurring the lines between reality and dreamlike worlds. She offers an insightful glimpse into her creative process as an independent animator, highlighting the absurdity and depth that characterize her work.

    BY JONNI PEPPERS

    Hi, my name is Jonni Peppers, and I’m a filmmaker and animator based in Chicago. For the past eight years, I’ve been working on an independent animated series called The Blindfold, which I’m going to completely finish in the next few years. The series consists of my films, Wasteland, which leads into Secrets and Lies in a Town of Sinners, which leads into Barber Westchester, which leads into my currently in-progress film, Take off the Blindfold, Adjust your Eyes, Look in the Mirror, See the Face of your Mother, which leads into the finale film and I’ll finish in a few years called The Cone Layer.

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    Jonni Peppers on worldbuilding, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Artwork © Jonni Peppers.

    The series has a lot of elements to it, but I would say, my main two goals are personal expression and worldbuilding. The series follows a bunch of different characters with different storylines that are all connected in various ways. I balance my many interests, including sci-fi, comedy, character studies, aliens, cults, and esoteric mythology. I find ways to smash it all together into one big thing. 

    Since the beginning, every time I establish something in the universe, it becomes a big part of the functionality of it. At first, although the rules of the universe may seem random, there’s actually a system that I’ve developed. It’s just that a lot of the rules of the system are in contrast to establish norms of world building-type storytelling. When I started, I decided that I wanted the visual style to change based on stuff like character perspective or external context of production, while always still being in the same world and having the same overarching story. It’s a way to both push forward the themes of the series, like subjectivity of reality, but it doesn’t stop at that metaphor.

    It becomes an important part of how the world is being built. Here’s a list of some of my critical rules: frequent stylistic changes based on character perspective or external production circumstances, form of characters and landscapes always change even when the style is consistent, and every character is suffering or confused in some way because the universe lacks consistency or rules and is coping or depressed as a result.

    Every character is an extension of myself in some way. Everything that happens in this series exists as a combination of my imagination, my depiction of the imagination, the viewers watching, and the characters’ assumed lived experiences all in conflict with each other. My assumption is that the characters are conscious. That’s another rule; my assumption is that the characters are conscious, and that because I am, this process imbues them with consciousness. But the main two things creating the universe are the frictions between imagination and depiction.

    Both need to be there for anything to exist, but they’re also at odds with each other, which creates this constantly in-friction universe. As the creator, I know this because there is a conflict between my imagination and how I depict things. Those things are always at odds, right? Because when I depict, I have to condense, simplify, and literalize something that is intangible and morphing and changing like a dream. 

    I boil everything down like this, imagination: she observes, she is feeling, she is merciful. Depiction: he controls, he’s intellect, he’s severe. 

    I boil everything down like this, imagination: she observes, she is feeling, she is merciful. Depiction: he controls, he’s intellect, he’s severe. Both aspects of this duality are essential to the existence of everything, and nothing can exist without both aspects. These characters and landscapes exist inside of my imagination and exist outside of it, depicted in the films translated and abstracted as cartoon drawings. Snapshots of their existence are cherry-picked frame by frame to create the films. They’re directly informed by my experiences, my personality, my life, people that I know, shows I’ve seen, stuff I’ve read, so on and so forth.

    To fully exist, they need to be depicted, and they can only be depicted if they are imagined first, but these things are in conflict and are inherently different. Their reality is a layered mess of all these things on top of each other. As a result of the depiction and the distribution of the depiction, they have thousands of eyeballs staring at them at any given moment.

    On top of all this, the thing that is constantly in threat of being erased, trapped, or destroyed is “the essence.” “The essence” is the reason it all exists. “The essence” is the inspiration. “The essence” is the driving force. Imagination and depiction are entangled in an endless war. Their interests are at odds, but they need each other to exist at all. Depiction wants to trap and control the essence. Imagination wants to free the essence. This is the reason we see anything at all.

    For the characters looking upwards, how would they experience this? How would they perceive this? They couldn’t understand the truth of how this is happening because it’s so far removed from what their reality is like, and they wouldn’t be able to experience it if they saw it. They would never be able to see the true expression of what is going on because the information couldn’t get to them in that way. So they’re experiencing it from beneath, from under, fragmented into millions of pieces, both elements of the duality of their universe overlapping each other to create their reality.

    Every single facet of how the story is told and received informs what their reality is, but there is no way for them to understand it in the fullness of what it is, which I imagine is similar to being a person living in our universe. There is something larger that is impossible for us to understand because we lack the perception to do so. All we can really do is gesture toward it.

    The series is ramping up to a conclusion with The Cone Layer that allows us to see the whole system after being trapped inside of it, and then free the characters as well as the author. I’m excited for you to see The Cone Layer whenever I finish it. Thank you.

    Portrait of Jonni Peppers. Photo courtesy of the artist. Drawing by Alison Vellas.

    [ID: Jonni is smiling brightly as she holds a black-and-white pen illustration of herself next to her face.]

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    Jonni Peppers
    She // Her // Hers
    Chicago, IL

    ​​Jonni Peppers is a lifelong artist and filmmaker from California who has dug a hole too deep to climb out of, so Peppers will keep on digging until the world ends, or she falls out the bottom of the world, like if you were to dig too far into the bottom of a bread bowl and all the soup falls out. Best case scenario, a nice pillow will be placed below the bread bowl Earth, so she can land nice and safe, instead of splattering like soup. And then Peppers will be free to wander the little space below bread bowl Earth, exploring and exploring all the crazy new stuff down there, and never have to dig ever again.

    jonnipeppers.com
    Instagram: @jonnipeppers

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