Joe Alterio’s blog on illustration, comix, design, animation, and other bouts of total awesomeness.
Cartoonification
Above is hopefully the first in a series of instructional animation that I’m doing for a company called VectorID. VID has a lot of super technical clients that deal with some pretty heavy technological concepts, and they started to experiment with something a little friendlier when it comes to describing hard-to-describe concepts, which is where I come in.
The idea of using graphics to get to the meat of a problem isn’t new, but it’s been gaining more momentum lately. The content above is neither that fascinating or is it really something that lends itself to easy discussion, so VID was looking for an out to allow explanation while keeping it somewhat bearable.
I actually really enjoyed doing this little piece for a few reasons, one of which is I forgot how good it feels to animate, even with restrained budget that really limited me to animating between a key frame or two. But the slow, deliberate process really flicked a prong in my brain that hasn’t been flicked for a while, and I’ve been thinking about doing some cartoons ever since. I’m excited to hopefully get some more work for VID (with a bigger budget for some real opportunity for gesture), but also to start work on a project that has been peeking into my consciousness every now and again for a few years now. As if I ever have enough time to do everything I want to do.
The other reason this humble little piece pleased me is that I think the expression on the robot is pretty funny, and I think I aped the old UPA cartoon-style better than I have before, which makes me happy. I know it’s probably not good enough for John K., but John K. is a total maniac, so whatever. In that spirit, here’s a few cool UPA-style commercial cartoons I found. So I feel comfortable being part of a long line of respectable shill animators.
Hooray for motion pictures!
I knew you’d be back…
(BTW, what kind of video player plugin is that? Flash or something else?)