DOUBLE
DRAGON.
Two princesses.
Two dragons.
A fate sealed by sacrifice.
01 / THE WORK
WATCH. LISTEN. LOOK AGAIN.THE BATTLE
IN MOTION.
Original animation and soundtrack. Choose play to see and hear the work.
02 / A BATTLE THROUGH TIME
THE PRINCESSES
COMMAND.
The princesses control the dragons.
Every twelve years, the battle returns. Two princesses and their armies clash for the coming dragon season. Their dragons carry the conflict across the scene; the generals have already paid the price of allegiance.
I built this world around Japanese painting and anime, with a visual style inspired by paper puppets. The figures are painted by hand, assembled through layers, and brought into motion frame by frame.
The skeleton generals each have one foot missing. That absence is deliberate. It records the sacrifice that determines which army they belong to.
03 / THE PRICE OF ALLEGIANCE
ONE FOOT.
A FATE SEALED.
The foot given up determines the generalโs element and allegiance.
Left foot.
Water.
The sacrifice of the left foot binds the skeleton general to the water army of its dragon princess.
Right foot.
Fire.
The sacrifice of the right foot binds the skeleton general to the fire army of its dragon princess.
Two companion works reveal these sacrifices. Both remain unreleased.
UNRELEASED COMPANION / LEFT FOOT ยท WATER
THE SACRIFICE
TAKES SHAPE.
The suspended skeletal foot makes the missing part visible. Around it, waves, architecture and patterns build the world of the water sacrifice.
This studio preview shows the left-foot companion. The right-foot work belongs to fire. These are unreleased parts of the Double Dragon story.
See it being made โ
04 / BEFORE THE BATTLE MOVES
DRAWING / PAINTING / LAYERSFROM THE LINE.
Into colour.
Studio evidence from the battle imagery: working drawings and painted details.
The battle, in lines
Opposing dragons and figures before the dense colour treatment.
A dragon takes colour
Hand-painted contours meet the recombined ExyOzy colour language.
Figures within the battle
A dragon and the surrounding figures, isolated as a working composition.
05 / INSIDE THE UNRELEASED WATER WORK
PIECE
BY PIECE.
Components, painted stages and assembly views. Checkerboards and editor fragments remain visible in these studio captures.
01 / Separate components
Wave forms, colour and shape before the larger assembly.
02 / The silhouette
A solid foot shape alongside the developing waves.
03 / Painting within the shape
Contours and patterned colour give the foot its detail.
04 / The chain
Each link carries its own fragments of colour.
05 / Bringing it together
Foot, chain and architecture meet; working lines remain visible.
06 / Water around the sacrifice
A separate wave layer fills out the surrounding scene.
07 / The closer view
Painted outlines and pattern meet the background motifs.
08 / On the studio screen
The composition open in Photoshop, with its working layers visible.
06 / MAKING THE WORK
THE HAND.
THE CODE.
The graft.
โHard work, basically.โ
I painted the imagery by hand, then generated hundreds of ExyOzy layers. I selected and incorporated several manually, painting individual components within each layer.
That ExyOzy process starts with components I draw. My own code cuts them apart, recycles their colours and recombines them under rules I have written. It grew from a pixel-swapping and shape-detection system I began in PHP and JavaScript in 2019, later ported to Python using OpenCV.
For the animation and effects, I used stop-frame techniques in Wondershare Filmora and Apple Motion. The work moves between drawing, computational recombination, manual painting and animation.
Watch the ExyOzy process โPAINTED.
ASSEMBLED.
Brought to life.
07 / THE SOUND IS MINE TOO
GUITAR.
KEYBOARDS.
My own voice.
One artist, across the whole scene.
I made the entire soundtrack on guitar and keyboards in Logic Pro. The vocal overdub was made to sound like Street Fighter or an old-style 8-bit NES game.
The sound was made alongside the visual world: another part of the battleโs character, assembled through playing, recording and processing.
Return to the film and listen โ08 / EXHIBITION HISTORY
OUT IN
THE WORLD.
ETH Denver 2024 and MESHfair 2024 are part of the workโs documented history.
The battle also entered the world created for MESHfair 2024, connecting the audiovisual work to a space visitors could explore.
Explore the MESHfair archive โ09 / KEEP FOLLOWING
THE BATTLE.
The wider world.
Explore the original artwork record and the recurring visual language behind the scene. The two sacrifice companions remain unreleased.
View the original artwork record โMeet the ExyOzys โ
Baburugamu / another part of the world โ
I am the system โ