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Experimental hand-drawn animation
Rebirth
A hand-drawn animation study where repeated redrawing, skull imagery, and rough motion carry expressive energy.
Work notes
Public copy is edited from the preserved original project page and its media record.
A hand-drawn animation study focused on expressive linework, repeated redrawing, and transitions between recurring motifs.
Context
The project draws from Basquiat's skull imagery and expressive painting language.
Approach
The motion is built through hand-drawn frame work, using repeated redrawing to test rotation, transition, and expressive movement.
Output
The completed animation connects expressive linework, repeated redrawing, and transitions between recurring motifs.
Film
Reference images remain in their original research context and are not presented as Ben Ma's authored artwork.
Rebirth
Begun July 2020
Conceptual Animation
Original overview
Rebirth is an experimental hand-drawn 2D animation that began in July 2020. Its style and pacing pay tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat's rough, emotionally direct visual language. The title reflects an imagined continuation of that energy after his early death.
Survey
Source credit unavailable in the archived page
Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged from New York's late-1970s downtown scene through the graffiti duo SAMO and became a leading Neo-Expressionist artist in the early 1980s. His work combines text, symbols, anatomy, and historical references to examine race, class, power, and identity. This research informed the animation's raw linework, layered imagery, and emotionally direct pacing.
Concept
I really like Basquiat’s skull paintings.As I was looking for inspiration, I found several angles in his skull paintings .So I immediately had the idea of animating them as spinning skulls.
I collected Basquiat head studies and examined their raw linework and expressive distortion. To retain a hand-drawn quality while accounting for the skull’s changing anatomy, I produced roughly 300 drawings in Photoshop with a drawing tablet over about two weeks.
As the animation expanded toward two to three minutes, I introduced children and jellyfish as images of growth and rebirth. The sequence moves from cell-like forms toward a human figure, with transitions built by dispersing one motif and gathering it into the next—skull to fish, fish to jellyfish, and onward.
At the time of the archived project record, the animation was still in development.
Moodboard
Source credit unavailable in the archived page
When I first conceived this work, I simply wanted to make Basquiat’s series of head paintings move. Since I was an animation student when I first came to SCAD, I wanted to be able to redraw them with my hands. And I personally think that 3D modeling is not suitable for Basquiat’s work, because too many messy lines and colors can only be expressed in 2D style.
Painting process
So far, I’ve done about a thousand pictures. I also abandoned some of the paintings, such as the shifting arms on the right. In the process of painting, I want to use these arms and jellyfish to make some transitions and at the same time express the creative idea of division and integration. But in the end I decided that the growth of the baby was better than the arms, so I threw it away.
Color palette
Current state
