WWF's stop-motion film lets real smoke swallow a girl's handcrafted world

Fossil-fuel emissions are invisible, which is why the climate crisis stays abstract for many people. For COP28, WWF asked London studio NOMINT — which had already animated ice and fire in earlier conference films — to make the case for phasing out fossil fuels in a way viewers could see.

Animate with the pollutant itself: real smoke drifting through stop-motion frames swallows a girl's handcrafted world, making emissions literally visible and physical.

'Up in Smoke' was animated in stop-motion with real smoke and 3D-printed puppets, shot over about a month entirely in camera: as the story unfolds, smoke pours in and gradually swallows the home and world of a young girl, scored by a community choir singing Billie Eilish's 'When the Party's Over'. Working with smoke is unpredictable by nature, and the team treated that unruliness as the point — the material behaved the way pollution behaves. The film was released at COP28 in Dubai in December 2023 and offered to WWF's offices worldwide for local adaptation.

The craft carried the argument. 'Up in Smoke' won a Yellow Pencil at the D&AD Awards 2024 plus two Graphite Pencils, two gold Clios, and the Grand Prix for Animation at CICLOPE 2024, and it was later added to the MoMA permanent collection.

Fossil-fuel emissions are invisible, which is why the climate crisis stays abstract for many people. For COP28, WWF asked London studio NOMINT — which had already animated ice and fire in earlier conference films — to make the case for phasing out fossil fuels in a way viewers could see.

'Up in Smoke' answers with the pollutant itself. The film was animated in stop-motion with real smoke and 3D-printed puppets, shot over about a month entirely in camera: as the story unfolds, smoke pours in and gradually swallows the home and world of a young girl, scored by a community choir singing Billie Eilish's 'When the Party's Over'.

Working with smoke is unpredictable by nature, and the team treated that unruliness as the point — the material behaved the way pollution behaves. The film was released at COP28 in Dubai in December 2023 and offered to WWF's offices worldwide for local adaptation.

The craft carried the argument. 'Up in Smoke' won a Yellow Pencil at the D&AD Awards 2024 plus two Graphite Pencils, two gold Clios, and the Grand Prix for Animation at CICLOPE 2024, and it was later added to the MoMA permanent collection.

Using real smoke instead of CGI made the film's method its message: the medium behaved as chaotically and destructively as the emissions it stood for.

Stop-motion with hand-built 3D-printed puppets gave an abstract policy ask a tangible, emotional subject — a child whose world fills with pollution.

Releasing at COP28 put the film in front of negotiators and global media at the moment fossil-fuel phase-out was being debated.

The film extended a recognisable series — ice at COP26, fire at COP27, smoke at COP28 — so each conference added one more visible form of the crisis.

When the problem is invisible, put its material on screen: animating with real smoke turned an abstract crisis into something audiences could watch fill a world.

'Up in Smoke' became one of the most decorated entries in WWF's COP film series, taking a D&AD 2024 Yellow Pencil in Animation along with two Graphite Pencils, golds at the Clios and British Arrows, the CICLOPE Grand Prix for Animation and a place in MoMA's permanent collection. WWF continued the approach the following year, releasing NOMINT's thermal-camera film 'In Hot Water' at COP29, extending the same idea: give an invisible climate crisis a medium that makes it visible.