Animation Can Be Powerful!

In the new Android commercial, the animation gives off a powerful message for anti-bullying. Through the years, animation has progressed so that it can evoke emotion even from the simplest of things. Oddly enough, it is simple to relate to these characters in the commercial, and it makes you attracted to the product as well. Here's the video to watch yourself and see how animation can provide messages just as well as real life actors.

Animation With A Message

I feel that people sometimes underestimate the social and emotional impact that animation can have on viewers. This video is an animation that shows an extremely moving and somewhat sad message, but it’s a beautiful piece of work. The video is displaying the idea that people try to reach the unreachable and the “perfect face” behind the screen. The media causes people to have these desires. The artist, Andrew Huang, does an amazing job of creating a relatable piece of artwork that displays a meaningful significance through animation.

More Animation Techniques

A couple of weeks ago, I did a blog post about different animation techniques. This week, I want to talk about some uses of animation that we do not necessarily recognize on first sight as well as talk about some other animation techniques.

The first animation technique I want to talk about is 'stick animation'. Stick figures are used often in storyboarding but as far as I remember, they have also been used in animation. The following is a very powerful video conveying a social message through the use of advanced stick animation.

Stick animations are often made with Adobe Flash. They are easier to draw and animate. There are also many online sites that allow you to animate stick figures frame by frame and export them in different formats. An example of this site that I tried using is:

http://www.stickpage.com/stickanimatorgameplay.shtml

I used this site to create a small 14 frame animation. I would have uploaded it here but I could not get the Adobe Flash to download in time.

Another animation technique that I found to be very interesting was paint-on-glass animation. In this style of animation, slow drying paint oils are manipulated on sheets of glass to create animation.

This is a popular animation technique however, it is considered very hard to master. The most well-known paint-on-glass animator is Russian animator Alexandr Petrov. He has used this style in numerous award winning short films.

This is a short film using paint-on-glass animation created by a college student.

I think these are two very awesome animation styles. Paint-on-glass is something that I would definitely want to give a shot.

Composited Typography

One of my favorite kinds of motion graphics is the use of text. Previously, I had written about some awesome Kinetic Typography, but I left out the whole idea of Compositing Typography! This idea of Tracking the Cameras Movement and adding in poignant text that relates to the Message.
I find the message is much stronger when the main ideas are highlighted with motion graphics. I know I've seen this in many different places but most recently, I've run into videos by Prince Ea:

Perhaps you've seen one or two of his videos. His videos perfectly demonstrate what I was talking about. I think the paring of Text, Slam Poetry, Cinematography, and Music combine to give messages a whole new dimension.

Many of Prince Ea's major projects have been in collaboration with Motion Graphic Artist Hodja Berlev and as it turns out most of his work is in After Effects. I find what he does really fascinating, and I think getting the chance to watch over his shoulder may be one of the coolest experiences.

I think this team in general, is doing a lot of good in the world of social media, and I think that if I could just be a part of what they're doing, the experience would be awesome. I would love to help them spread the words they're saying, and maybe even help in a larger more physical way.

This is the kind of thing I would love to do.

Kinetic Typography

The Perfect Cup of Tea by George Orwell from Luís Sá on Vimeo.

I was playing around with a number of basic After Affects tutorials the other day when I came across one for kinetic typography. Kinetic typography is when animation is used to express ideas and emotion via text. Above is an outstanding example. It's eye-catching and entertaining.

Adding movable text to something that's usually static is a great way of capturing attention--especially when the message or topic it might be somewhat boring or standard otherwise. It's a fun way to potentially introduce something... Or someone. All of a sudden I've got this great idea for a "welcome to my personal website" type video. How impressive would that "hello" be?

Here is basic tutorial I think a lot can be learned from: