Surrealist art style explainer videos

Soft melting forms and long shadows on a bright, endless plain. Brief it in one sentence and get a narrated, animated explainer film in the Surrealist dreamscape style, scored and voiced, in about 15 minutes.

Make one in this style

Or let the director choose a style for your topic.

A frame in the Surrealist dreamscape style

What it looks like, and when to use it.

A smooth blue sky, a glassy sea and an endless ochre plain where ordinary things go soft, sag and melt, and every object throws a long shadow from a low sun. Surrealist dreamscape is drawn in code, so each strange change is exact and slow. It suits ideas about time, memory, dreams and the mind, where the point is that something familiar has turned strange.

Best for

Time, memory and the mind
Philosophy and big questions
Art history and culture

Try a brief like

“Why time seems to speed up as we age”
“What happens in the brain when we dream”
“How memories change each time we recall them”

The art direction the director follows.

Every style is a full art direction, not a filter: its own palette, type, motion and music. This is the brief the director works from for Surrealist dreamscape.

Look: Drawn in code, no generated images: a 1930s Surrealist dreamscape. A clear, smooth sky from ultramarine to pale yellow over a glassy still sea, golden coastal rocks and an endless ochre plain. A few everyday objects that matter to the topic stand on it, painted with smooth academic volume (gradients and soft inner shadows, no outlines). Some of them go soft: hard things sag, fold over edges and drip like cloth. A low sun makes every object throw a long, sharp shadow.
Motion: Slow, uncanny and continuous: soft objects keep sagging and drooping, shadows grow longer across the plain, small creatures crawl, a tall thin-legged figure walks along the horizon. One strange change at a time, never a bounce. Scenes change with a melt: the new picture flows down over the old one in round-ended drips.
Music: Dreamy and slightly uneasy: slow strings, a music-box or celesta motif, distant guitar, long reverb. Beautiful, with something a little off.
Type: A refined classical serif (Cormorant or Didot-like) in warm cream with a soft dark shadow over the sky. Words stay still while the world around them melts.