Consumed

For their graduation project Consumed, Ina created a stop-motion/live-action short film that takes the form of a psychological thriller. The film portrays an artist caught in a loop of daily routines and rising anxiety, ultimately consumed by their own work—both literally and metaphorically. Developed from a personal experience with burnout, the project explores the mental toll of artistic labor and the isolating pressures of productivity. Recurring motifs—a spider, a cacoon—symbolize exhaustion, entrapment, and the fine line between creation and self-destruction. The film moves between dreamlike states and waking confusion, using visual metaphor and repetition to mimic the fractured perception of burnout.

Consumed employs a hybrid visual language: charcoal sketches animated frame by frame, paintings, time-lapse sequences, and live-action footage mimicking stop-motion through stuttering movement. Ina is particularly interested in how these different modes—live action, sketch, painting—interact and what they reveal when layered together. This disjointed aesthetic reflects the fragmented experience of burnout, where time distorts, perception falters, and the line between self and work begins to blur. Paintings shown within the film are also exhibited separately, further blurring the line between documentation and artwork, fiction and reality.

Ina’s use of layered media creates an environment where chaos, ambiguity, and discomfort become tools for reflection. The imagery is intentionally unclear and open to interpretation, mirroring the multiplicity and dissociation that often accompany mental health struggles. Through this work, Ina frames burnout as a systemic glitch—an interruption in the relentless push to produce and perform within a capitalist framework.