Hi everyone! My name is Darya Ovsyannikova — Ovsyan✌
I tell stories through images, movement and sound.
I am an animation film director interested in unusual stories, expressive visual language and ideas that challenge the way we see the world.
For me, filmmaking begins with a question, an image or an idea that refuses to leave my mind. I am drawn to stories that look beyond the surface of everyday life, exploring the absurd, the philosophical and the uncomfortable. I like creating worlds that feel strange yet familiar, where ordinary situations can turn into something unexpected.
My work moves between authorial films, animation, music videos and commercial projects. Each format offers a different way to tell a story, experiment with visual form and communicate an idea. Whatever the project, I am interested in finding the approach that makes it distinctive.
I work with a project from its initial concept to its final realization, bringing together storytelling, direction and visual development.
This portfolio brings together projects that reflect different sides of my practice: personal films, collaborative work and commercial animation.
I am interested in ideas with a point of view, stories that leave something behind and collaborations that make room for creative exploration.
SKILLS & TOOLS
•Direction & Storytelling
Film Direction, Visual Storytelling, Concept Development, Screenwriting, Storyboarding.•2D Animation & Illustration
Tools: TVPaint Animation, Clip Studio Paint, Procreate, Adobe Photoshop.•Motion Design & Post-production
Tools: Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop.•3D Modeling & Sculpting
Tools: Blender, ZBrush.
•Sound Design & Audio
Tools: Adobe Audition.
Sound Design, Audio Editing, Experimental Sound Composition.•AI-Assisted Art & Visual Development
Tools: Leonardo AI and other AI tools.•Production
Project Development, Creative Direction, Animation Production, Visual Development.
MY PROJECTS
One crowded train. One exhausted mind. An impossible escape.
Every morning, the protagonist takes the train to work. Surrounded by people, trapped in the heat and overwhelmed by the routine of everyday life, he reaches a breaking point. Then he hears birds singing.For a moment, the ordinary world gives way to something else. The tired office worker imagines himself as Icarus, growing wings and escaping the suffocating train in a flight towards the sun.But this is not a story about a man who discovers his freedom. As the film reaches its ending, we understand that the flight exists only in his mind. The protagonist has lost touch with reality, and his attempt to escape the everyday world has become an expression of his own mental collapse.
The Idea
I wanted to explore the moment when ordinary life becomes unbearable. The crowded train is more than a physical space: it represents the pressure of routine, exhaustion and the feeling of being trapped in a life that leaves no room to breathe.
The myth of Icarus becomes a way to express the protagonist’s desire to escape. His imagined flight is both beautiful and tragic, revealing the distance between the freedom he longs for and the reality he cannot leave behind.
I built the story around a contrast between the oppressive reality of the crowded train and the protagonist’s imagined escape. The transformation into Icarus gives a visual form to his growing desperation, while the ending changes the meaning of everything the audience has just seen.Rather than explaining the protagonist’s condition directly, the film allows the viewer to discover it through the final reveal.
The film has been screened at festivals.
The Idea
Nagoya is a series of three animated promotional videos created for a restaurant. The project explores how animation can bring together the visual traditions associated with Japan and the energy of contemporary Japanese culture.I worked on the project from beginning to end, developing and realizing the videos as a complete creative process. This included working with the visual concept, animation and sound.
The project resulted in three completed animated advertising videos for Nagoya.
It demonstrates another side of my work as a director: the ability to translate a client’s brief into a visual concept and carry that concept through to the final result.
Music video created in a team with Nicole Kurganskaya and Anastasia Plyusnina for NEONOVAYA AURA
An emergency interrupts a mission in space. A female astronaut leaves her spaceship to repair the vessel, but the ship suddenly explodes, leaving her alone in the vastness of the universe.As she begins to lose consciousness, she notices a distant flicker of light. When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself face to face with an enormous, mysterious woman.At first, the astronaut is frightened. But the stranger reassures her, and the encounter becomes the beginning of a journey through the universe.
The Idea
I wanted to develop a story that moves from isolation and uncertainty towards a mysterious encounter. Space becomes more than an empty setting: it is a place where the familiar rules of reality seem to disappear and something impossible can become real.
The contrast between the astronaut’s vulnerability and the enormous presence she encounters creates the foundation for the story. The journey becomes an opportunity to explore the relationship between an individual and something much larger than herself.
