The independent newspaper Falter is well known for holding the mirror up to society. And this is exactly what we did with this website.

Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, it takes the user on a journey through the levels of modern hell. Each level metaphorically addresses a topic omnipresent in today’s world. Such as the addiction to smartphones, genetically modified food, freedom of speech or surveillance. The user dives deep into a dark, dystopian world, not so very different from ours. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel – it’s the knowledge and well-founded opinion Falter can provide you with.

The website was brought to life in a dark and gritty look. To get a more realistic feel, each frame was first created as a limited palette colour image and later narrowed down to black and white. It was crafted with a combination of traditional and digital media, which allowed the necessary freedom in production and animation while keeping the roughness of analogue drawings. Every background and every character was hand drawn and then brought into a 3D environment. Using Photoshop and some footage created in Cinema 4D, each scene was created as a single layered painted illustration, then deconstructed, animated and composed in After Effects. To further emphasize the journey through hell, the textures applied to the characters and objects were photographed using a macro lens. For instance the texture of the tree was a close up photograph of an old oak.