Excel animation short “I made a film in Excel” turns spreadsheet cells into monsters, fish and a star field in a 75 second film by London based animation director Maria Tomazou. The film keeps the Excel interface visible, starts with the title typed into cell E2, and ends with the creator clicking save.
How the Excel animation short turns cells into characters
The short uses the spreadsheet grid as a pixel canvas, with colored cells sequenced to form different figures: a triangular toothed monster that opens a wide mouth, a green creature that grows a pink flower on its head, a blocky fish dragging a tail as it swims, and floating eyeballs drifting against a deep blue star field. The silhouettes are deliberately simple and carry the feel of a retro pixel game, where a few colored squares can already suggest an expressive face.
The Excel gridlines and software controls remain on screen throughout, so viewers are repeatedly reminded of the program they usually use for numbers and reports. The fish advances one cell at a time, and its awkward shape becomes oddly endearing. The familiar workspace populated by strange creatures creates a productive dissonance that is central to the short’s charm.
It took a long time, and she could not explain why
The screen is busy with movement while Tomazou narrates in a self deprecating voice. She says the short was not intended to entertain, to teach, or to change anyone’s life, and that she herself does not really know why she made it. The work took a long time, and she describes the process of continuing a task whose purpose she could not name as at times painful, and at the end she was simply glad to have finished.
The narration reads like the moment after completing a big project when someone asks, “So what was the point?” and there is no neat answer. As the characters on screen grow more energetic, the voice of self doubt becomes unexpectedly funny. The short refuses to pin a grand reason on its creation, and that refusal makes viewers willing to watch all 75 seconds.
A trained animator treats Excel like a studio
Tomazou trained in animation at the National Film and Television School, graduating in 2023, and her background is in stop motion. Her earlier film The Tornado Outside follows a character named Anna forced out of a cottage beside a tornado. That project took roughly a year to produce and required rigging and suspended set pieces; in this new work she shifted the production space into a computer spreadsheet.
Using spreadsheet software for visual art has precedents. Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi has long used the drawing tools inside spreadsheet programs to paint cherry blossoms, mountains and forests. Tomazou adds motion and narration to the medium, giving the familiar grid a different life. She has not detailed exactly which production steps she used, or whether formulas or macros were involved.
At the end of the short a save dialog appears with the filename I made a film in Excel.xlsx. The fish, flowered creatures and floating eyeballs suddenly read like an attachment that might be due next week.
