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Bobby Redmond's furlough animation is a psychedelic summer fantasy

When we weren't allowed to get outside and experience the joys of summer over the last few months, designer and artist Bobby Redmond decided to make summer come to him.

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Furloughed from his usual work, he set about creating A Fever Dream of Summer Lost, an animation that takes the form of a "psychedelic fantasy of all things summer," as the designer puts it. "During the lockdown, movement is limited with only short walks to experience the joys of outdoors. Hopes and dreams of a vibrant, queer, social summer are but a hallucination in the small confines of a London flat."

Yet the beauty of animation lies in its capacity to create entirely new worlds that are full of the joy that's been wrung out of the one we have to inhabit physically. Leaps of imagination fulled by bold colour, splashes of neon, deliciously playful typography and a strikingly unusual approach to merging photographic images, simple cutout shapes and digital animation create something, finally, to make us smile.

The sound design was created by Harry Moore, and "edges from a pedestrian beat to woozy gentle surreal rhythms replicating the melting away of the confines of the walls to the realms of imagination," says Redmond.

Originally from Bunclody in southeast Ireland, Redmond works across graphic design, illustration, animation and painting. Having moved to London in 2015, his design clients so far have included festivals Citadel, Lovebox, All Points East and BST Hyde Park; while his painting work uses a queer lens, through which to create striking portraiture that celebrates gay male love and examine the notion of bringing his viewers into his own private psychic and domestic spaces.

Across his portfolio, his work is characterised by a cheeky, playful feel that merges the sexual, the joyful and the tenderly emotive.

Two abstract faces with geometric features merge against a vibrant purple and cyan swirling background in Bobby Redmond's psychedelic summer animation
Colourful animated illustration showing a stylised face in profile with a magenta eye, alongside a melting shape filled with rainbow gradients and small floating spheres against a vibrant blue background
A colourful retro-style television set with blue frame displays a vibrant, psychedelic animated scene on its screen, set against a neon pink and blue backdrop
Colourful animation still showing a retro TV set, abstract shapes and a cyan-coloured figure against a vibrant pink background from Bobby Redmond's A Fever Dream of Summer Lost
Vibrant animated scene with a white daisy and sun against a pastel sky, a rainbow curving below with a blue arrow pointing upwards
Vibrant psychedelic animation with a magenta blob-like form and floating colourful shapes against a gradient sky, featuring a small yellow smiley face
Vibrant psychedelic animation featuring a stylised yellow fish with magenta spots against flowing ribbons of neon pink, blue and cyan, surrounded by floating coloured orbs against a gradient sky
Colourful ice cream cones with glowing outlines against a vibrant psychedelic blue and pink gradient background with floating splashes
A silhouetted figure lies on a bright pink surfboard against a golden sandy beach with blue water and neon-lit waves above, surrounded by colourful floating objects and geometric shapes
Colourful animated scene with a green-skinned figure standing on a platform against a sunset sky, surrounded by stylised flowers and abstract shapes in shades of blue, pink and yellow
Colourful animated seahorses and starfish swim through swirling blue water against a green background in Bobby Redmond's A Fever Dream of Summer Lost
Bright pink and red text reading "A Fever Dream of Summer Lost" against a bright blue sky with white clouds
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