Konoco Studio is an illustration + animation studio created by Cecile Fountain-Jardim, an animator and illustrator focused on storytelling through constructed image. An American artist based in London with a degree from the Royal College of Art, she holds professional backgrounds in both film and archiving, from the convergence of which her practice now actively draws. Her work is both invention and preservation, an amalgamation of techniques and practices from years of experience in both industries incorporated within the realms of illustration and animation as fundamental elements of the yarn from which her stories are woven. Often serving as a form of personal reflection through the active process of making, her practice focuses on the collection, creation, and sharing of both speculated and collected narratives centered around the exploration of universal human emotions.

She works predominantly in digital drawing and frame-by-frame animation, weaving together a blend of traditional 2D and stop-motion techniques in her films. Her practice regularly incorporates found footage and other found materials, most notably visibly textured and tactile analog materials brought into a digital space, the result of which is a collage-style assemblage emphasizing the human-made and personally authentic. Her work is often hand-drawn, aesthetically playful, and inspired by the concept of ‘wabi-sabi’, or a focus on imperfection. It is through this focus on the imperfect and playful that her practice explores the tension between the lighthearted and the serious, often juxtaposing colorful, childlike visuals with the deeply emotional stories she tells.

Through her pieces, she explores themes such as nostalgia, memory, and speculated realities, often taking the form of narrative nonfictional, often autoethnographic, animated films and fabulation through illustration. The intent of her work lies in the sharing of personal histories to create and share human-centered narratives which reflect the commonalities in our respective experiences in light and accessible forms.