AIKO: An Adult Cartoon

In recent years the idea that cartoons are not only for children, but also for adults has become as more popular view. With series such as Avatar: The Last Airbender that challenge what kinds of messages cartoons can convey, Aiko seems to be following with the trends.

With a Japanese anime influenced art style Aiko looks fabulous; however, it still needs funding. Although it's come a long way from it's original concepts, and the entire first season is planned out, Aiko still needs support. It's director and one of the founders of ROYGBIV (an LA based animation studio), recently released the trailer in hopes to gain attention and funding for the flagship series.

As a fan of American and Japanese cartoons, and 2D animation, I hope this project recieves all the funding it needs to get this project off the ground. The style reminds me of one of my favorite childhood cartoons, Samurai Jack, and I hope that this show can live up to it's more adult - themes.













Aiko Trailer
More Info

Coldplay Ink Interactive Animation

Coldplay Ink Interactive Animation

                                    

http://www.blind.com/work/project/coldplay-ink/

This interactive animation was made by Blind as a music video for Coldplay's song Ink. When I first came across it, I had no idea that it was interactive. The viewer gets to make several choices throughout the video that effect the outcome of the story. If you follow the link below the YouTube video (posted here) it will take you to Blind's site, and you can try it for yourself. 

Some notes about the art work: 

This animation is so beautiful. 

While the story seems to be about the characters, the two things that really stand out to me are the backgrounds and the lighting. 

Backgrounds:

• I really enjoy the painted style the art was done in. It gives off a look that's a mix between physical and digital media. 
• One of my favorite backgrounds is of the ocean at the very beginning. The motion of the waves along with the way the figure is framed by the rocks makes it perfect. 
• There's a lot of blue and yellow/orange colors being used. These work really well because they're complementary colors.

Lighting:

• At 0:57 the warm light striking the glasses on the bar and the back of the stool looks awesome. It contrasts really well with the cool blue upper right corner. Also, it looks like the bartender only has one eye (which is one more than most of the other characters have).
• I love the way the light is shown hitting the trees and the side of the mountain (on the right) at 1:14. It's done in a really simple way by using a few different colors, but it's really effective. 
• For most of the video we see really warm light areas, with small sections of cool dark. 2:55 is great because it contrasts so much with what we've seen, and gives us mostly cool dark colors, with only a slight glow of warm from the sun setting behind the mountains and the stars.