I think the reason I'm so drawn to animation is that you have complete control and
you can do whatever you want. When creating informative videos you're slowing
the viewer down to understand one thing at a time. Animation can personify
emotions, it can personify thought.
It's the same stuff you see when you go to sleep at night.
Animation says let's recreate that experience somehow, let's pull
other people into it.
There's something intrinsically magic
about animation. Many artists through the ages have wanted to bring their art to life.
Animation has been around for a long time. I mean,
we are finding more and more cave drawings
in which animals have multiple limbs; the artist wanted to get the impression of motion.
You come into the nineteenth century with magic lanterns in which one piece of glass had
one picture and then you switch it over and it changes and becomes something else.
But it wasn't until photography came around,
motion pictures that was able to be used to make a successive series of
still drawings
look like they were alive.
There's a whole series of techniques that can be used now. One of the great
traditional ones was hand-drawn animation.
There's also puppet animation.
There's clay animation which is a form of puppet animation. Today there's computer
animation. CGI.
Some of the major players happened really early on.
One of them was a man named Emile Cole.
He introduced the idea of surrealism and the use of abstraction in animation.
Winsor McCay started to make his animated films about three years later
in nineteen eleven. He had an incredible ability to create a real
life character out of impossible things like a mosquito or a dinosaur.
In coming forward to the Disney animation studio in the nineteen thirties where they
codified
and they tested out these principles. One of them was something called stretch
and squash. Those are principles that give you an elasticity.
But then they found there was a principal called anticipation.
There was other things like follow through. If a person has long hair and they come to a
stop, their hair will continue to go. It's a secondary action.
So all of these little symbols add a veracity
to the animations so that audiences are convinced they're seeing something that's really happening
and it opened up all sorts of possibilities for the future.
Since the beginning of motion pictures we've had informative videos so think
about the films that would've been played in a science class.
One of the classic ones is the power of ten video. And Disney is another great example of this.
You look at the goofy golf video from the fifties. He's explaining how the golf
swing works using overlaid graphs and charts and stuff so we thought that we
could kind of maybe do it differently or better or whatever and so our business is getting
information out to the public and educating them.
So the first video that we ever did was called the state of the internet it was combining
the storytelling nature of the political cartoons with the information that you
get from this info graphic. The last fifty years animation has been created
in a fun way for a very broad audience and so i think there's a lot of respect
and trust in this medium for storytelling but you are manipulating
how the viewer is processing that and in general designing presentations one of
the things i'm always pushing is make the big information element as big as
possible. Slideshow like videos lends itself to people taking screenshots
sharing them and being able to add their context to that slice of the story.
Times have really changed where now we're using the internet as a community center for
ideas and the role that animation plays is for the purpose of education.
The roots of motion graphics are really the roots of experimental animation which I don't know if
people understand that that is as old as the medium of film itself.
Both motion graphics and animation they encourage play and it's through that process of
experimentation that i think a lot of interesting stuff is made. Every now and
then somebody creates something that really has a viewpoint or that's trying
to do something new usually by accident and and next thing you know they're
developing a voice of their own. By taking risks and inviting in mistakes
you can invite a whole new
way of creating into your process. There's just a kind of weird abstract drama playing
out on the screen that transcends a lot of the normal structures of storytelling.
I think it goes back to when we used to gaze into the fire. That kind of primal
experience of looking at
flickering imagery and hearing things that seemed to match with it. That's very deeply
embedded in this. Motion graphics basically taps into that and that's important.
You know you don't always have to have
a character or a clear narrative in order to move somebody.
Animation is just the medium I use to express my stories. With live action
it's more of a community and it doesn't maybe allow for your real thought process to kick in.
I much prefer the way pencil looks. You can get these little accidents into the smudges on the
paper
and you're just in your room and you can create these incredible worlds.
With Belly, I
tried to think about what it was like to be ostracized by an older sister and
how you can just feel like so rotten inside, so animation's a great medium for that
cause it's just you. It's all coming out of you, and the stuff that comes out are things that
would only come out if you're just suck alone with your brain for a really long time.
Have you seen my brother?
His name is Alex. Yes, I have
seen him.
I think if something makes sense to you, even if it's abstract, it will make sense to the viewer.
So yeah, like going inside the belly as this abstract element for something being in the pit of your
stomach just seemed to make sense. Hey buddy.
I miss you.
Yeah, yeah, right. I know.
Come on, Oscar.
Our ride's here.
And then when people come up and they're just like oh yeah i totally got it i feel that way too sometimes and you're just like
really really? It's a very weird feeling.
With animation
I like to express myself as sort of externalizing inner
angst and turmoils and things and because it's in this cute package it's easier to digest.
In animation anything is possible.
There really are no limits. The reason that info graphics have become very popular is
people are using the internet more and more to be educated about things.
I love the process of
drawing and figuring out how you can make it look weird
but still realistic. If you think it,
you can draw it,
you can animate it.
You can be an animator.