Biwy – Blood Sampling with a Smile began as an educational animation created to help children approach blood tests with less fear and more understanding.

What followed was something we did not expect: the film travelled through the international festival circuit, receiving multiple official selections and awards along the way.

From Educational Film to Festival Selection

Although Biwy was not conceived as a traditional festival short, its story and visual approach found an audience well beyond its original context.

The film was selected by several international festivals, including Athens Animfest, Catharsis International Film and Video Festival, Harrogate Film Festival, Romford Film Festival, and the European Cinematography Awards.

It was also recognised by The European Independent Film Award (EIFA), where it went on to become a winner.

An Unexpected Recognition

For us, that journey made the project even more special.

Biwy was first and foremost created to communicate something clearly and sensitively to children. Seeing that same film connect with international festival audiences and juries was an unexpected and very rewarding recognition.

It showed us that a project with a very specific educational purpose can still travel far, find new audiences, and be appreciated for its storytelling and animation.

A Small Butterfly That Travelled Far

Those festival selections became an important chapter in the story of Biwy and a memorable moment for Racoon Studio.

The project later grew beyond its first episode, but this initial film will always have a special place for us: a small educational animation that ended up travelling much further than we ever imagined.

You can discover more about Biwy, its story, and the creative process behind the project on the dedicated project page.

Not bad for a small butterfly.

Over the years, five Racoon Studio projects have been featured by Behance in both the Motion Graphics and After Effects galleries.

From Mnemonica to our most recent digital campaign for Iper La grande i, seeing different pieces of our work selected by the Behance curatorial team has been a recurring and particularly rewarding recognition.

Each project comes from a different brief, client, and creative challenge, but together they offer a glimpse into the kind of work we love to make: projects where illustration, storytelling, design, and animation can come together and find their own visual language.

Five Projects, Ten Features

The projects selected by Behance are Mnemonica, Poste Delivery Now, Hitachi Zosen Inova – Hunter Heritage, Jam, and Iper La grande i – Digital Campaign.

All five received a double feature, appearing in both the Motion Graphics and After Effects curated galleries.

What makes this especially satisfying is the variety of the projects themselves.

They span different years, visual styles, clients, and approaches to animation. Some are strongly character-driven, others focus more on graphic language or storytelling, but each represents a different part of Racoon’s creative journey.

From Mnemonica to Iper La grande i

The first of these projects, Mnemonica, was published in 2021, followed by Poste Delivery Now and Hitachi Zosen Inova in 2022, and Jam later that same year. More recently, Iper La grande i – Digital Campaign, published in 2025, joined the list.

Seeing projects created across different moments of the studio’s history receive the same kind of recognition makes these features feel less like isolated achievements and more like part of an ongoing path.

A Place We Still Look to for Inspiration

Behance has always been one of the places where creatives go to discover new work, explore different approaches, and see what other studios and artists are making around the world.

Having our own projects become part of those curated galleries is therefore especially meaningful.

It means seeing work that began inside the studio enter the same space we regularly use for inspiration and discovery — and knowing that, somewhere, it might become part of someone else’s reference folder too.

Five projects, two featured galleries each, and hopefully more to come.

Over the years, some of our work has found its way beyond our own channels and into places we have always looked to for inspiration.

We’re proud to have been featured by Stash and Motionographer, two international platforms that have long been part of the motion design conversation.

The two features came at very different moments in our journey and focused on very different projects — which makes them especially meaningful to us.

Mnemonica on Stash

In 2021, Stash featured our promotional film for Mnemonica, a platform designed for viewing and sharing content within the film industry.

The project was created to help Mnemonica communicate with an international audience and challenged us to develop a visual language that could speak clearly to film professionals across different countries and cultural backgrounds.

We combined traditional animation, 3D references, character design, and motion graphics, working within a deliberately limited colour palette to build a story that could feel immediate and universal.

Seeing the project published by Stash — a platform we have followed for years for its selection of animation, motion design, and visual experimentation — was an important moment for the studio.

TAO OF THE CITY on Motionographer

More recently, Motionographer featured TAO OF THE CITY, an experimental short film presented and powered by Racoon Studio.

Created by Pietro Polentes, the project started from street photography shot with a Ricoh GR III and explored the quiet, often overlooked spaces of the contemporary city. AI tools were then used to animate and extend those original photographs, creating a continuous visual narrative.

The aim was never to replace the original photographic process, but to use technology as a way of expanding an already personal visual point of view — exploring the relationship between observation, authorship, and new creative tools.

Having TAO OF THE CITY selected by Motionographer felt particularly rewarding because of the experimental and personal nature of the project.

Two Features, Two Different Sides of Racoon

Mnemonica and TAO OF THE CITY are very different projects.

One was created for a client and built around communication, storytelling, and character animation. The other began as a personal photographic exploration and evolved into an experiment with moving images and new technology.

Together, they represent two sides of what we enjoy doing at Racoon: solving creative challenges for our clients while continuing to explore, experiment, and make things simply because we are curious about where they might lead.

Being featured by Stash and Motionographer is something we’re genuinely proud of.

And it’s always a special feeling to find our work in the same places we go when we want to discover what’s happening next in motion design.

HZI – Hunter Heritage has been named 2022 Video of the Year at the Motion Design Awards.

The award marks the final step in a journey that began with Video of the Day, continued with Video of the Month, and culminated in the highest recognition of all: Video of the Year.

For Racoon Studio, this is a particularly meaningful achievement.

Every award is worth celebrating, but this one feels special because it recognizes a project we have been deeply connected to from the very beginning — a film shaped by creative freedom, visual exploration, and the contribution of an entire team.

From Video of the Day to Video of the Year

Seeing HZI – Hunter Heritage move from Video of the Day to Video of the Month, and finally to Video of the Year, made the recognition even more rewarding.

It’s always nice to see a project continue to resonate over time, and following this progression gave us the feeling that the care and attention invested in the film had truly reached beyond the studio.

For us, the award is not only a celebration of the final result, but also of the creative process that made it possible.

A Project Built on Creative Freedom

When Hitachi Zosen Inova asked us to tell the story of its founder and his journey from Ireland to late nineteenth-century Japan, we immediately saw the potential of the story.

More importantly, we were given an unusually high degree of creative freedom.

Rather than simply reconstructing a sequence of historical events, we had the opportunity to interpret them and develop a visual language that could capture the atmosphere, sense of discovery, and transformation behind the story.

That trust became one of the defining aspects of the project.

Finding the Right Visual Language

The visual research behind Hunter Heritage was extensive.

We wanted to avoid a straightforward documentary approach and instead create something that felt evocative, contemporary, and strongly rooted in illustration and motion.

The project developed through art direction, storyboarding, design, animation, and continuous experimentation. Every choice had to contribute to the same visual world, while still allowing the story to move across different places, periods, and moments.

Rather than separating design and animation into distinct phases, we developed them together, letting movement influence the compositions and visual ideas evolve through animation.

You can discover more about the creative process, visual development, and production behind HZI – Hunter Heritage on the project page.

A Collective Achievement

Hunter Heritage is the result of a collective effort.

Every person involved helped shape the character of the film, from the first concepts to the final frames. Different skills and perspectives came together throughout the production, and the project grew through constant discussion, testing, and refinement.

That is also why this recognition feels so significant to us.

The award celebrates the film, of course, but it also celebrates the collaboration, curiosity, and attention to detail that went into making it.

A Special Recognition

Receiving international recognition for a project we believed in so strongly is an enormous source of satisfaction.

The Motion Design Awards recognition feels like a wonderful conclusion to a project that challenged us creatively and gave us the opportunity to experiment with a great deal of freedom.

It is also a reminder of what can happen when trust, research, and teamwork come together in the right way.

We are incredibly proud to see HZI – Hunter Heritage named Video of the Year.

We’re proud to share that Racoon has been featured in School of Motion’s “500 Studios You Need to Know”, a curated collection celebrating motion design studios from around the world.

The book brings together 500 studios from 41 countries, offering a snapshot of the people, styles, and creative approaches shaping motion design today.

For us, being part of this selection is a meaningful recognition and a great opportunity to see Racoon Studio represented alongside so many studios whose work we admire.

500 Studios from Around the World

Created by School of Motion as a guide to the global motion design industry, the book spans different disciplines, styles, and scales — from established international studios to smaller independent teams.

Among the 500 selected studios, only 10 are from Italy, which makes our inclusion even more special.

More than a ranking, the book is designed as a tool for discovery: a way to explore new studios, different visual languages, and the variety of approaches that make the motion design community so interesting.

A Recognition of Our Work

Being featured in the book is particularly meaningful because it is not connected to a single project.

It reflects the work we have built over time, the way we approach design and animation, and the contribution of all the people who have been part of that journey.

For us, it is a small but important milestone — and a nice reminder that the work created in our studio can travel far beyond it.

Proud to Be One of the 500

We’re grateful to the School of Motion team for including Racoon Studio in the selection and proud to share the pages with so many talented studios from around the world.

And, of course, we’re very happy to see a little Racoon among the 500.

What began at the Treviso Comic Book Festival in 2025 has grown into something much more than a single exhibition.

Over the past year, Racoon Studio has been taking part in Animation Conversation, a project created to bring together animation, illustration, comics, and the people behind them — creating a space for exchange between different studios, artists, languages, and approaches.

And the conversation is still going.

It Started in Treviso

Animation Conversation made its debut at the Treviso Comic Book Festival 2025, bringing together a selection of independent studios and artists working across the contemporary Italian animation scene.

The idea behind the project is simple but important: to show animation in all its diversity, moving beyond the idea that it belongs exclusively to children’s entertainment and highlighting the many styles, techniques, and creative purposes that coexist within the medium.

Racoon was invited to be part of the exhibition alongside a wide range of studios and creatives from across the Italian animation landscape.

Thanks to augmented reality technology by Aria Platform, the works on display also moved beyond the traditional exhibition format: individual frames came to life through animation, creating a bridge between static illustration and moving image.

From an Exhibition to a Conversation

What made the project particularly interesting for us was not only the opportunity to show our work, but the idea of creating a space where the Italian animation community could actually meet and talk.

Animation is often a collective process carried out behind screens, across studios, cities, and increasingly remote teams. Events like Animation Conversation offer the opposite experience: the possibility to put faces to the work, exchange perspectives, and discuss how our industry is evolving.

That dialogue continued beyond Treviso, including a new event in Milan in December 2025, where Racoon once again took part in the project and Riccardo Galimberti joined the conversation as a speaker.

For us, this has become one of the most valuable aspects of the initiative: not simply exhibiting finished work, but contributing directly to a wider discussion around animation, creativity, and the people who make it happen.

The Conversation Continues

Animation Conversation was never intended to remain tied to a single place.

In 2026, the project continues its journey, with Racoon once again taking part in new editions and new contexts, including Graphic Days® in Turin and the Treviso Comic Book Festival.

Each stop becomes another opportunity to bring different voices together and to explore the contemporary Italian animation scene through different styles, techniques, and approaches.

For Racoon, being part of the project from its first edition and continuing to follow its evolution has made Animation Conversation feel less like a series of individual events and more like an ongoing creative dialogue.

More Than a Series of Events

For us, the most interesting thing about Animation Conversation is precisely its continuity.

It is becoming a place — both physical and conceptual — where studios that often share the same industry but rarely the same room can come together, discover each other’s work, and exchange ideas.

Being part of that conversation as it grows into new cities and new contexts is something we are very happy about.

Because sometimes the most valuable part of making animation is not only what ends up on screen.

It is the conversation that happens around it.