Tend

On paper this is the most conventional dad-loves-kid story imaginable, but Judd and Barrett's execution is so formally controlled it borders on unsettling—the tenderness becomes claustrophobic, which is either brilliant restraint or exactly the kind of polite craft that puts me to sleep.

Animade's lineage of poetic formalism is on full display here; the precision of the animation and the disciplined emotional architecture—watching a father's devotion calcify into something harder to name—positions this squarely in the tradition of animated drama that trusts its craft to do the narrative work.

The decision to keep the father's face obscured or abstracted forces every ounce of characterization into his hands and posture; it's a single formal constraint that transforms what could be saccharine into something genuinely unsettling and alive.

Tend sucks you in with its vivid style and carefully-considered universe, but its narrative has a real emotive edge that will resonate particularly hard with parents.

Written and directed by Animade’s Tom Judd (Co-Founder & Creative Director) and Ed Barrett (Creative Director), the story was inspired by the duo’s own experiences as fathers of young children and it’s pretty clear what they wanted the message of the piece to be here.

Like the heavily-bearded Dad in this tale, I've often lost sight of what's most important.