An Animated Version of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Made of 12,597 Watercolor Paintings

Three years ago Swedish artist Anders Ram­sell cre­at­ed this 35 minute con­densed ver­sion of Blade Run­ner, frame by frame, using water­col­ors. Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion con­tains 12,597 impres­sion­is­tic works on water­logged artist paper that togeth­er present, if not a faith­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Rid­ley Scott’s film, then a remem­brance of the film.

It’s as if you boot­ed up a repli­cant film fan and had them try to recon­struct Blade Run­ner from mem­o­ry. (Ram­sell him­self calls it a “para­phrase” of the film.) It’s rec­og­niz­able, but due to the light­ness and fuzzy lines of water­col­or, there’s also a mag­ic to these images. (This is also due to the small size of each frame, 1.5 x 3 cm.)

The film is a jump for­ward from Ramsell’s oth­er works. Before 2011, he was dab­bling in var­i­ous media: nudes in ink on can­vas, abstract acrylic splotch­es, sur­re­al draw­ings that explore hors­es and preg­nan­cy. Div­ing into Blade Run­ner and the amaz­ing amount of work to pro­duce this film did the trick. Ram­sell has tak­en on this tech­nique as wor­thy of fur­ther explo­ration and made a new­er film, Gen­der­ness, which explores trans­sex­u­al­i­ty, and fea­tures a nar­ra­tion by none oth­er than Rut­ger Hauer, who decid­ed to work with Ram­sell after see­ing, Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion. Watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Wes Ander­son Movie Sets Recre­at­ed in Cute, Minia­ture Dio­ra­mas

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.