Munich-based motion designer/illustrator Karim Dabbèche just dropped us his new feel-good micro-short called Overload, a whimsical multi-style exploration of “multiplicity, forms and identities”.
Kairm Dabbèche: This project started out as a fairly conventional 3D piece, but gradually evolved into an accumulation of graphic languages, reflecting my current state of mind. Why confine yourself to a specific aesthetic niche when you can explore everything?
Throughout the process, each scene and element became a potential direction for the project. And instead of choosing one, I decided to let them coexist, playing with contrasts and feeding this tension between control and chaos.
“This back and forth between construction and deconstruction, between control and loss of control, eventually became an integral part of the project itself.”
My practice is quite diverse. I started out in illustration before moving into frame-by-frame 2D animation, then evolving towards 2D motion design, and eventually developing my 3D animation practice. Today, these different approaches coexist and develop in parallel.
For this film, I found myself mixing all of these approaches without really knowing where they would lead. Almost like an exquisite corpse, where you know the beginning and the end, but not what happens in between.
Overload confronted me with a new workflow and pushed me out of familiar territory, forcing me to conceive each sequence autonomously while keeping the overall vision of the project in mind. This back and forth between construction and deconstruction, between control and loss of control, eventually became an integral part of the project itself.





Director/animator: Kairm Dabbèche
Music: Trackclub