Progressive Animation

I've been looking over old favorite examples of what I call progressive animation today, as one of the producers I work with has asked for an opening title sequence for one of the colleges at MU is having us produce a video overview/promo for their college. (The promo of the University that we did this summer went over very well with this particular college and they want their own awesome promo.) So, the producer came to me with an idea that, as he was explaining it, sounded a lot like an animated progression that would take the viewer through all of the majors and give a holistic overview of the college and how all of these majors are related.

We were talking about finding videos that would somewhat depict what he had in mind and I started showing him some of my favorites. I have wanted to figure out how to do one of these progressive animations but hadn't yet had a "story" to follow as my basis.

"Drift" by Psyop is an animation I came across several years ago when I began working here, and I think it still holds up:


Next is one I found more recently and was very intrigued by the Paula Scher look that they used with the text, and then really liked the simplicity of the shapes which enhance the story told by the narrator. It's by GOODMagazine and is called "The Hidden Cost of War":

What I am, what I am not

Contrary to what may be expected of me in my job, I am not the type of artist/designer who can come up with an idea or create some sort of graphics without inspiration and without the end product in mind. Early in my job, I somehow managed to force myself to create a whole bunch of meaningless backgrounds for use on any show, and I still have those backgrounds but they don't really do anything for me and they don't really add much to the shows that they end up in. I occasionally get credit for making particularly exciting and special graphics, but what is often not realized, I inevitably made those graphics with that particular show and particular underlying audio in mind.

I have come to see the creation of graphics or creation of art in much the same way I expect inventors came up with their inventions. First there was a need or idea for the invention. I can't imagine it came from the emptiness of nothing, rather I think of most inventions as fulfilling a particular need or some desire. In much the same way, I don't believe in creating motion graphics for a show without knowing a little something about the show first. If fantastic graphics are required, then I require some things as well: answers to certain questions for the parties involved about the preconceived notions for how said graphics will look and feel to an identified audience. I also need to know the interested party's definition of "spectacular" or "fantastic" or whatever adjective is used to describe these graphics I am to make. How can I succeed without a definition for success?

With that in mind, I wonder if there are any artists out there who can essentially work in a vacuum. Are there some incredibly gifted people out there who never need google images or vimeo's groups? Yes, occasionally, I will come up with an idea that is completely unrelated to any project I am currently working on and that may get used for a future project, but once again, that future project must have a need for that graphic.

I suppose you could say that I don't believe in graphics for graphic's sake. Perhaps that's because I've seen productions where the graphics get in the way and actually distract from the overall end product.

In seeking inspiration, I went to one of my trusty sources, a group on vimeo for motion graphic artists. There I found another fantastic animation called FLUX by candas sisman and after watching this beautiful thing, I read the description below. Lo and behold, this artist got inspiration from somewhere too (from İlhan Koman). No vacuum here.


F L U X from candas sisman on Vimeo.

No more imagination procrastination, please

At work I've had a few meetings about a potentially ongoing project for one of the colleges on campus. I was looking for inspiration to bring to my meeting today, thinking the project was essentially an ongoing retrospective told from the individuals who are part of the college's distinguished history, and was really trying to focus on how to make graphics for a prototype project about multiple people yet only having one person to begin with.

So I tried to focus on what the "many" could look like. I also began with something our client pointed out from the beginning - that it should have warmth and be human. I couldn't help but think of Dow Chemical's campaign "The Human Element" (Dow seemed to create this campaign to bury a shady past that has dolled out death and destruction for unknown thousands, but the ads themselves are quite good).

  

Just as as side-note, I can't think of Dow without thinking about the Yes Men who brought my attention to some of the atrocities of our generation. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend their documentary "The Yes Men Fix the World". It's very funny and poignant as well.

I also thought of the title sequence for In Plain Sight, a TV show that I've been watching on Netflix, which makes use of many pictures that come together to form one big picture - I've also seen this done in the movie Love, Actually.

However, I felt I would be coming to the meeting unprepared if I had not thought about how to incorporate ideas into something usable, which sent me down the road of procrastination by way of searching for more information. I found a couple of other images that could inspire a title sequence. The first is called "Houdini in plain sight", by blogger Ted Warnell:

And the second is an image of the HSBC history wall, found among images of cool places to work, on a UK site of "The 6 Coolest Offices in the World":

Surely, among all of these visuals I can transform these ideas into something else that is perfect for this project, right?