Dying To Know
Ram Dass & Timothy Leary
created for: CSNC
art direction | design | animation
When director Gay Dillingham saw the artwork I created for the film 2012: Time for Change, she did me the honor of requesting that I create several animated sequences for the feature documentary Ram Dass and Timothy Leary: Dying To Know, a story of two friends and the era they shaped.
Probing the edges of consciousness in the early 1960’s through intensive psychedelic explorations, Leary, the LSD guru, and Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher for an entire generation, are two extremely complex and controversial personalities whose lives overlapped and influenced each other for decades. The film examines how the two Harvard psychology professors became counterculture icons. Archival footage and animated sequences weave in and out of the final conversation held between the two friends, in which they discuss candidly their remarkably different viewpoints of the greatest mystery of life, death. Narrated by Robert Redford.
The project provoked fascinating questions on spiritually and provided quite the entertaining history lesson. Working closely with the director, I designed the film’s opening titles and five kaleidoscopic-like mandalas which help guide the narrative of the film with the themes of birth, life, death, soul, and here-after. I created a heavily textural palette with vibrant colors and ornate illustrative elements.
The film has been shown in various festivals and theaters across the country over the past year. I am also extremely honored that the Ram Dass foundation has used one of the illustrations on their website.
Please check out some of the animated kaleidoscopic sequences I created which are posted on vimeo.