Source: Animation "You Are Not a Kiwi"

A masters student at the Estonian Academy of Arts  has won the best animation award at the Palm Springs International Animation Festival.

"You Are Not a Kiwi" created using watercolors by Maria Savaleva premiered in the festival's main program and won in the watercolor-animation category.

The film deals with integration and accepting strangers through the flightless bird community living in New Zealand, the kiwis. Mentors of the work are Priit and Olga Pärn.

"I like this character, this bird, he has a long beak, eyes, but he doesn't have a mouth," Savaleva told ETV's news program "Aktuaalne kaamera".

"I had to think about how I could  express the characters' emotions through movements, sounds and light, so this is more symbolic."

"When I started working on  the film, I initially thought it would be pencil-drawn.

Then I tried to do it with a gel pencil and ink.

And then somehow I made it to using watercolors; it's quite rare in the animation world," Savaleva said.