The year 2026 marks thirty years of cinematic work by Roberto Catani, an artist trained in Urbino who has developed a distinctive, analogue approach to animation. His films are defined by a meticulous “fatto a mano” process, requiring thousands of hand-drawn sheets, each layered with multiple colour passes. This volume collects all the original drawings from Il burattino e la balena (2024), presented at the Venice Biennale – Orizzonti 2024 and also qualifying—beyond other recognitions—for the Academy Awards.
The project, inspired by Collodi, explores themes of resistance and individuality through the story of a puppet rejecting imposed social norms, while offering a rare insight into the complexity of traditional animation.
Alongside the frame-by-frame material, the book includes a dedicated section of preparatory sketches that reveal the development of the film’s characters and the early stages of the creative process. At the end of the original frames, a QR code provides access to the full film.
