La Casa de la Contratación — Museum Film
02 / 10IMAGO hired me to make the whole film for the Casa de la Contratación museum: art direction, illustration, animation, motion graphics and editing.
Project Summary
IMAGO, in charge of the project for the museum of the Casa de la Contratación, hired me to make its film. The Casa de la Contratación was the institution in Seville that organised and controlled the voyages to the Indies in the 16th century, and the brief was to tell that story on a wall of the exhibition room, in a little under five minutes.
I took care of the whole film: art direction, illustration, animation, motion graphics and editing. Every scene is built like a page of the period: ink-edged images that open over warm paper, a thin progress line at the top and a caption in Spanish and English, so the history reads as something being drawn in front of you.
Drawn first, then set in motion
The film follows the Casa de la Contratación from 1492 to Elcano’s return in 1522: the cosmographers who ordered the ocean with mathematics, stars and charts, the pilots who crossed it, the storms along the Indies Route and the officials who kept a record of every voyage.
From Seville to the whole world
The motion is slow and physical: maps unfold, hands write, ships emerge from the ink. The art direction keeps one language for the whole piece, with the same paper, the same ink edge and the same restrained typography from the first date to the last, so a scene of 1492 and one of 1522 clearly belong to the same story.
On the wall of the museum
The film is projected in a dim exhibition room, among display cases and period paintings, so the image and the collection are read together. Every shot was composed for that wall, with the captions placed where a visitor standing in the room can read them.
Below you can see the complete film.
Credits
- Art direction, 3D and animation
- Rafa de Tovar
- Year
- 2026