“Cempasúchil” is an animated music video for the latest single from Alden Clarke, produced by mexican film studio Weird Fishes Films.
Set inside a traditional Día de los Muertos altar, it follows the reunion of two lovers who died before their wedding. Coming back to life for a single night, with the help of their deceased relatives, they meet again to be together for eternity.
You can watch it here:
In México and in some parts of latin america “Cempasúchil” is the name of the marigold flowers that by tradition are used to decorate the altars for Día de los Muertos, it is believed that the beautiful color and smell of the flowers guide the spirits of our deceased relatives and friends all the way from the Mictlán (the land of the dead) to the land of the living where we welcome them with their favorite food, beverages, candies and even toys.
Usually altars have three levels, the bottom has food, toys or other objects that are thought to bring joy to the visiting spirits, the middle has all the photographs of the deceased, and at the top you may find religious stuff like crosses, images or figures of Saints, incense, etc. However this isn’t a strict order so different families and communities make their altars in many shapes and sizes.
The photographs of the deceased are placed as a representation of their living memory, however this tradition exists since pre-hispanic times, way before the invention of photography, so in the past they used “Calaveritas”; small decorated skulls usually made from sugar, but it is not unusual to see ones made from chocolate or even bread. In some communities this idea of the calaverita goes further, they make whole figurines out of paper, wood or even stone.
The inspiration for this work comes from seeing the traditional altars that families put together in the town of San Andrés Mixquic, México City. The people open the doors of their homes for you to see their traditions and memories, it is also traditional to decorate in a similar fashion the tombs and headstones of the graveyard, so if you have a chance to come by I highly recommend visiting there for Día de los Muertos.
I made the decision to build this digital altar as if it was set up by a rural family, where usually the traditions are kept more faithful to our ancestors. So we avoided plastics or any other industrialized material apart from the glass bottles. In contemporary rural México you can still see handmade plates, vases, crates, clothing, pretty much everything, it has a charm and atmosphere that we aimed to achieve and pay respects to.
Also, this was produced in more or less 15 days, from scratch. Admittedly the animation is a bit rushed and some materials could be better. Many of the textures come from my own photographic recollection, many more were synthesized using Stable Diffusion (using the Dream Textures add-on) specially normal maps, and a wholalotmore of hand painted details. This is our first try at photorealism, we usually do NPR stuff, I think we succeeded to a certain point.
I plan on releasing for free some of the resources used in the project, I would like to make more accessible these colors and textures because it was a bit hard to us to find image resources of rural México in a 3D-ready manner.
Hope you liked it and thank you for your time!
(Sorry if my english is spotty)
