The always impressive Giant Ant made this 2017 series to honor milestones in LGBTQ history for Pride month. Some great moments in the series, especially 5-4 Pt.1 – playing with perspective and scale, clean quick transitions between very different scenes, and reducing the amount of info to just what’s needed. Visual storytelling that doesn’t just mimic the audio, but also fuels the message.
Inspiration: MARNI Collage + 2D animation
Just saw this animation from BlinkMyBrain . . .lots of other good videos on the vimeo page, but this one for Marni’s new shop in Rome is especially good.
I’m digging the stylized figure and limited use of color (appears in the last twenty seconds) – great use of collage effects with bold shapes and motion.
Inspiration: 2D animation
From an interview with Sylvain Chomet (Belleville Rendez-vous, 2003, The Illusionist, 2010).
And what are your thoughts on the decline of 2D and stop-motion animation in favour of 3D?
The thing that’s actually in decline is not 2D/Stop Motion but 3D Animation. It’s become too expensive to make a CGI movie and the technique has now got to a point that most [3D Animation] films have the same characters – they all look the same!
It started with Toy Story; it was declared that 2D Animation was dead because we were going to move into CGI. CGI was supposedly going to be a lot cheaper. However, today it’s actually more expensive as you need to render some really heavy pictures, and sometimes rendering takes more time than actually drawing it.
Also, I don’t think anything is original coming from CGI Animation, and it should be. 2D Animation still has a lot of variety. I got a lot of happy faces when I said to the students ‘you made the right choice’ [choosing 2D Animation], because there’s more and more films being done and it’s getting cheaper. I feel that the 3D technique has got to a point that if you make it realistic it’s going to just look like real life. It might look fantastic but it’s not Animation. For me, it’s reached a dead end, and people are getting fed-up with always seeing the same style of film.
Finally, what is your main message for aspiring Animators everywhere?
The main thing – as I was saying to the students – is to enjoy and have fun [with animation]. And be politically incorrect, that’s what Animation is great for. Animation is for ‘bad boys’ and ‘bad girls’.
Keep an eye out for Chomet’s upcoming film, The Thousand Miles (2019)
