‘Sunny Side Up’: A Lockdown Stop Motion Animation and the Psychology Behind the Film

Abstract

This paper describes and analyses ‘Sunny Side Up’, a short stop motion animated film created by one of the authors of this paper during the social distancing and lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was inspired by an unparalleled era where the time
to contemplate was abundant. It features the internal dialogue of the protagonist as he cooks in his kitchen. The investigation focuses on the ‘monkey mind’—a metaphor for the unsettled mind used in Buddhist writings. The creator and the protagonist of the film
both experience this state of mind at the time of the conception of the film. This takes the form of a phycological analysis of the restless mind, which clearly was the creator’s and subsequently the film’s protagonist state of mind at the time of the conception of the film.