the making of BEE
“The climate crisis has been gnawing at my insides for most of my life, from when I first learned about as a young teen in high school (back when it was called ‘global warming’) to now nearly 20 years later. I have been striving to find ways to fuel my climate activism with my art making. I came up with the idea to follow a bee through climate devastated areas, to be able to see climate change from a bee’s perspective.
I knew I wanted to integrate my animation and theatre training. This led me to the mixed media concept, where I could use my theatre experience in set and prop building to create miniature sets for each of the locations and then animate the bee over top. Each of the different settings was built using found and recycled objects, such as cardboard, plastics, food scraps, fabrics, and any other waste generated by my own household. For example, the cityscape was made out of milk cartons, boxes, and plastic bottles; the hive from a yogurt cup and packing paper; the logging site from styrofoam and coffee grounds. This gives the backgrounds a tactile, stop-motion feel, while also commenting on the sheer amount of waste humans create.
I designed the bee to look cute and aesthetically pleasing, so that viewers would gravitate towards her, empathize with her, and see the climate crisis through her eyes.” — Jessica
the character design
Bees are a keystone species, meaning various animals, including humans, rely on the food sources that bees pollinate. For example, some of the foods that are heavily reliant on bee pollination are apples, cucumbers, avocados, and almonds. There are even some crops that are fully dependent -- kiwi, pumpkin, and cocoa beans -- meaning, a world without pollinators is a world without chocolate!
1 in 4 wild bee species are at risk of extinction. BEE’s main character is based on a mix between the Western Bumblebee and the which has been in serious decline since 1998, and the Rusty-patched Bumblebee, which is on the endangered species list. Both bees are native to Canada, the former in the Pacific Northwest and the latter in Ontario.
In this piece, the bee character acts an allegory for climate change, with each setting built from literal trash to show the repercussions of pollution and climate inaction. It’s all connected: old growth logging leads to forest fires, which leads to the decline of bees, which leads to the decline of food crops and the entire ecosystem. Our very survival depends on the bee.
Two of the major threats to their survival are climate change and loss of habitat.
the animatic
the sets
the hive
a field in a drought
bumblebees build their hives within holes in the ground. They often choose abandoned rodent burrows, tree logs, or rock piles.
a polluted city
an old-growth logging site
an overflowing dump
the hive, after wildfire
the supplies range from cardboard, boxes, and packing paper to styrofoam, plastic bags, bottles, and yogurt cups to chopsticks, pencils, fabric, coffee grounds, toothpicks, toy wheels, and a toy truck. Each background was painted on large pieces of cardboard.
Then, with support from rice & beans theatre, we took high quality photos of each setting and background separately against either a green or blue screen. After that, we removed the green/blue screen from the images and composited them as layers in our animation software, where we added other details, like extra trees, windows, or smog, by painting them digitally.
bee-hind the scenes
photos by Anika Vervecken