Water in the Wine

An animated sequence in three frames that illustrates the French idiom mettre de l'eau dans son vin, literally "to put water in your wine". It means to compromise, or tone things down. Each frame is a photo collage with the words spelled out in cut-out, ransom-note letters, animated as a GIF.

The sentence is split across three frames so the story plays out as you read:

1. "Mettre" (to put): a scene of excess, with a red velvet armchair, a hand of playing cards, a vinyl record and dominoes.
2. "de l'eau" (water): a hand reaches in and turns on a brass tap above a vintage sink.
3. "dans son vin" (in your wine): the water pours into a glass of red wine on a waiter's tray, under two disco balls.

01 · Collage

Every frame sits on the same crumpled green paper so the three read as one continuous strip. The words are built from mismatched cut-out letters in bright colours, and the cards, dominoes and record cross the frame edges to link the scenes.

02 · Build

I built the three frames side by side in one Photoshop file, with a layer group per frame and every element on its own named layer (the word, the hand, the dominoes, the armchair, the record, the cards, the background). That kept each piece separate and ready to animate, and each frame was exported as its own GIF.

• Three animated GIFs, one per frame
• The full three-frame sequence