To accompany the inclusion of Haein & Paul’s ‘Peepin’ in the Skwigly-curated edition of Cardiff Animation Nights and to mark their recent signing to our directorial roster, Skwigly chatted with the duo to learn more about their working dynamic, the origins of their film and what the future holds.

Haein: “I’m really inspired by artists and just things around me. In particular artists like Misaki Kawai, who got me looking into the Japanese movement called heta-uma, which I think directly translates to ‘bad but good’. It was a movement in the 70s, an underground manga movement of not being so tied down to realistic renditions of things, but just having a bit more fun and being more playful. I think that’s something that I really gravitate towards, I don’t really want something that looks conventionally attractive or anything like that. I guess we both like off-the-beaten-track a little bit.”

Paul: “I suppose you weren’t really talking about race as much as body type, but for us it’s pretty important to put authenticity on the screen, the things that we observe in everyday life, not recycling what we see looking at cartoons or animation or movies. We kind of have a very strong observational part to our work, whether or not it’s a political thing, it’s just something that we know. That’s where that comes from, from my point of view anyway.”

Read the full interview here.