Gruff: Handmade Animation Explores Emotional Repression

Julian Curi, known as Righteous Robot, spent three years handcrafting the animated short film "Gruff" on paper. The nearly ten-minute film uses a handmade paper technique where every character and detail is drawn and assembled from cardboard, manipulated like puppets in front of a camera. Computers were only used to remove the strings needed to control the subjects. The story follows a young girl whose grandfather seems unable to show affection, reflecting Curi's own experience processing his father's death. The film explores how some people express love in ways other than words or gestures, culminating in an acceptance of different emotional languages. Curi describes it as "a story about people who you know love you, but don't exactly express it in words." The film was written, directed, and entirely hand-drawn by Curi over three years. The result resembles a puppet theater, with craftsmanship enhancing the emotional impact.