Animation for Social Change

This week my blog post focuses on how a creative tool like animation can be, and is used for social change, inspiration, and motivation. Many artists and illustrators have used animation to convey messages on several issues surrounding a society.

Recently, I read an article on why animation should be used for social change. One of the last lines of the article reads: "A well thought out animation can attract and engage a wide audience, be retained in their memory and actually change the way people see an important issue and respond to it."

This line resonated with me because it is very true. In the video below a very strong, powerful message is conveyed. This video is very well-acclaimed and was created by Rodrigo Blass.

Very often in such videos, children are the main subject or the main characters portraying a society. In my opinion, this is because we as humans show most empathy towards children than anyone else.

Another use of animation for change is through illustrations, especially of what would otherwise be considered graphic. The current situation in Syria has created turned many citizens in to refugees. 

The image below is from a Buzzfeed post which consists of artist illustrations after the story of a three year old refugee boy washing up on shore.

In my opinion, animation can play a great role in providing people with new perspectives about certain things in society and it is a great way to engage people in discussions about how a society is working.

Illustrator to After Effects

Illustrator can be a great tool for creating shapes, designs, graphics and many other illustrations that aren't so easy on After effects. But when you try to bring in a Illustrator file it can be a hassle sometime because After Effects does't make the illustration into vector files, this leads to pixilation, and control over the whole shape harder. When bringing in a illustration file into After effects there are a few tedious set you have to take. This is only needed if you have CS5 but if you have CS6 they make it a lot easier and you don't need any these sets.
Illustrator to After Effects

1. Open illustrator file
2. select all of the paths and shapes in art board
3. hit command "C"

4. Open After effects
5. create a new composition
6. lay - new - solid
7. paste the paths and shapes from illustrator
8. go into the drop down and see how many masks there are
9. select only the path of each mask
10. command "C"
11. then take the pen tool and click on the art board
12. This will create a shape
13. Go to the drop down of the shape, make sure there is enough shapes same as the mask under the drop down (if theres 12 mask paths, make 12 shapes under the shape layer
14. you already copies the mask paths
15. select the shapes paths all 12 and paste those masks
16. turn the view off the solid layer and you will see the new shape layer on art board
17. Go in and see what shape path effects what part of shape and label it.

Malaria by Edson Oda

Malaria is a new short film by Brazilian filmmaker Edson Oda. The story consists of a dialogue between Death and a mercenary named Fabiano, who announces he's been hired to kill the grim reaper. It is an interesting story in itself but the best thing about it in my opinion is the technique/design; mixing time-lapse with origami, kirigami (which i didn't know about before watching this), and nankin illustration, presented in a comic-book-like style. The different shots and camera angles are changed manually by the "animator" during the film (he changes from shot to shot by placing a new drawing on top of the last one), which gives an interesting aspect of performance to the film.

I am posting this here because I find this to be a very interesting/unusual way of telling a story. Also because I've been working on my computer a lot and it's just very nice to see how creative people can get on the more analog side of things.

Here's the link;


Malaria from Edson Oda on Vimeo.

...and then came MAN

Hey everyone - so I recently was working on a promotional video for Hempstravaganza, which will be happening next week on campus. I created an intro title sequence and dabbled a bit into using Flash to make a hemp plant "grow" out of the corner of the screen. As I was thinking about Flash, I was curious about the extent to which it could benefit animations when used together with other software, such as After Effects. I came across this humorous, but somewhat pessimistic video that was created using both Flash and AE. It shows an entertaining, yet sobering perspective on the effects humans have on the planet. The artist, Steve Cutts, is a freelance animator from the UK that has produced work for brands like Coca-Cola, Bacardi, Reebok and Kellogg's.