Two Ships

• Director: McKinley Benson
• Category: Video Design — Short Film
• Location: Atlanta, Georgia, United States
• Project Brief: Create a hand-drawn short film that explores emotional connection, distance, and intimacy through poetic storytelling and expressive animation.

A short film gets under your skin when it refuses to shout. "Two Ships" stays close to a feeling most people have lived: two people who love each other and keep missing each other, ships passing not at sea but in a shared apartment, one leaving just as the other arrives.

DesignRush juror Joy Chakravorty described it as "a beautifully crafted simple story," and that simplicity is exactly what gives the film its weight.

The animation shows its own making, lines with the slight imprecision of something built by hand rather than output by a machine. That quality gives the film a physical warmth that cleaner animation would have erased. 

The drawing is stripped of artifice and leans on the essentials, which is precisely where the poetry sits.

"The drawing is superb. No artifice, just the essentials. Very poetic and full of humanity."

— Lucia Barbaresso, Design Awards Jury

Muted tones and soft gradients never press too hard, and the stillness in the compositions carries as much meaning as anything moving through them. The film treats silence as something worth fillingcarefully rather than cutting around. 

The restraint becomes the source of impact, emotionally jarring in a way you don't see coming.

"This is a masterpiece in creative storytelling. Although they were hand-drawn, the characters felt real. It's a testament to the importance of emotion in storytelling."

— Marc Strong, Design Awards Jury

Atmospheric background details and a subtle soundscape build the way a specific memory does, slowly and without announcing themselves. By the end, the film names the feeling without ever speaking it.