Blake Harris: Hey guys, we’re big fans of your work. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Before we get into the origins of Tiny Inventions, I’d love to hear about how you two first met.

Ru Kuwahata: [laughter]

Blake Harris: A story I’m sure you’ve never told before…

Max Porter: Never!

Ru Kuwahata: We met at a studio.

Max Porter: We should make a better story up than that.

Ru Kuwahata: I know. It’s so boring. But basically we just met at work. We were working at this studio in New York. Max was sitting a few feet away from me. And his back was pointed at me, so he didn’t know I was staring at him.

Blake Harris: And what did you notice about him…and his back?

Ru Kuwahata: So the way I work is to go really intense for a while, then I take a break, then back to intense, then break… But Max, I would just watch him work intensely all day long. He never checked his e-mail, never surfed the web. And I thought: wow, this guy has so much concentration. He has so much passion for this! So that’s was why I was intrigued to talk to him, this dedication.

Blake Harris: That’s amazing.

Ru Kuwahata: I still feel that way about him. Once he gets into something he doesn’t get out until he gets it done.

Blake Harris: [to Max] Is that true?

Max Porter: I guess so.

Ru Kuwahata: It is. Like if you did a time-lapse of him working it would look like a still shot.

Blake Harris: I assume that shortly thereafter you guys began dating. So I’m curious how you went from that to working together? Or did that come first?

Max Porter: I’ll fast-forward a little bit. So I remember very clearly…I liked the job I was working at (where we met) but I had kind of given up on my own work at that point. I was 25 years old. I never thought I’d make something on my own again. Or if I did, I thought it would be something like a television pilot. Something that wasn’t make for the sake of just being art. And I remember clearly, Ru and I were together for 6-7 months at the time and I was talking about how “Oh, I want to do this, I really want to do this” and she just said, “Okay, we’ll do it. Let’s try it. We’ll see if it works.” I guess it kinda…I just didn’t think it was possible to say okay let’s try something. But we did, and it worked really well the first time around. It just clicked. And I think it was because…it was just a real idealistic approach; we’re doing this for passion, we’re doing this because we love it, there’s no other real reason. It awakened something in me.

Blake Harris: What was that first project?

Ru Kuwahata: It was actually a Christmas card. It was a 3D illustration. Then we did another holiday animation. We did a bunch of small things on a personal basis and then started to think: okay, maybe we can make this into a fuller scale.

Max Porter: Then we started…Ru had started a project before we met that was teaching kids how to craft.

Ru Kuwahata: That didn’t work out very well!

Max Porter: No, but it was a good learning experience. It let us test out a few things.

Ru Kuwahata: Yeah, we tested out a few things until we formed Tiny Inventions and started taking jobs. Meanwhile, we started working on an independent film of our own. We thought it would only take 3-4 months but it ended up taking 2.5 years.

Blake Harris: Was that Something Left, Something Taken?

Ru Kuwahata: Yes.

Blake Harris: How did the idea for that project come about? I feel like there’s a lot of research that went into it with the forensic stuff!

Ru Kuwahata: It’s loosely based on a true story. We went to a film festival in San Francisco and the festival Director’s family member was our designated driver. And we just had this total New Yorker attitude of “why’s this guy acting so nice?”

Max Porter: [laughing]

Ru Kuwahata: And then one of the nights he decided to take us out to a “hidden bar” in the woods and we just totally freaked out in the back seat. So “just in case,” we decided to leave some evidence: the fingerprints and the hair. After that experience, we started to think maybe we can turn this into a film. Even before that we were so into Forensic Files. We used to watched one hour of Forensic Files before we went to bed, so we had all this knowledge of creepy forensics stuff…

Max Porter: Yeah, that was all “research.” And then we got more and more into learning about forensics while we were making the film; buying books and stuff.

Blake Harris: The film feels very autobiographical. Which, now, makes a lot of sense. But even before I knew how “true” it was, the story felt very personal. The characters had your names, you guys did the voices, etc. Was that a conscious decision or did it just sort of happen?

Ru Kuwahata: That wasn’t our original plan. But we basically had no budget. We were just really, really poor. Barely making a living in New York, so we had no choice but to use our own voices. And then we figured: if we’re going to use our own voices, then why not make the characters based on us? It was not so much an ideal decision for me. [To Max] What about for you?

Max Porter: I think sometimes in animation it tries to be really timeless. Something not specific. I don’t know. But at some point it felt like: you know, this is becoming a lot about us. For example: stuttering, which I actually do. And we thought: Let’s not get rid of this stuff. Let’s embrace it. Let’s try to make this about us in a way.

Ru Kuwahata: It was also somewhat early in our relationship so it was kind of interesting. There was something about trying to make ourselves into characters that was kind of nice.

Blake Harris: Did the success of Something Left, Something Taken open up a lot of new opportunities for you guys? There is a specialness and personal nature to your work…

Ru Kuwahata: It definitely led to a lot of opportunities. Independent film-wise, it directly led to a residency in the Netherlands.

Max Porter: Should we explain what that is a little bit? This was the Netherlands Institute for Animated Films (NIAF). And that was basically like a residency program for up to two years, where you get a stipend and they pay for you to live and work on your own project. And we started Between Times while we were at that residency. But then the residency shut down about halfway into our time there.

Ru Kuwahata: Yeah, the EU economy started to collapse and it led to a big cut in the art funds in the Netherlands. That was tough but luckily by then we had some other opportunities. The more work you do, the more you have to show people and get them to believe in you. So it’s a snowball effect. But Something Left Something Taken was definitely the beginning where we kind of left a mark.

Max Porter: I remember a friend of mine, way back when I was just starting in animation, he said, “nobody is ever going to pay you to do something you haven’t done already.” So I think for us, Something Left, Something Taken was us saying we can make a longer project by ourselves. We can tell a story. We can do it all ourselves. So having that project was helpful when we wanted to do other things.

Ru Kuwahata: Yeah. We started to get some commercial opportunities and developed a reputation as “mixed media directors.”

Blake Harris: Max, you had mentioned earlier that this idea of doing more personal things was kind of like a reawakening. There was a purity to it. When you started taking those commercial opportunities…I guess my question is: do you feel a difference working on something that’s yours versus working on a project for someone else?

Max Porter: Well there was something that Ru once said. “When we’re working for clients and doing a job, it is a lot easier than our own work because the answers are given to us.” Meaning that the client knows what they want; or, at the least, they make the final decisions. We contribute and collaborate the best way we can, but it’s a much different process than just having a blank sheet of paper in front of us and asking ourselves: okay, we can do anything, but what do we want to do? That’s a really hard question to answer. And it’s even harder when both of us have to feel strongly about what we’re going to put on that blank piece of paper.

Ru Kuwahata: Yeah.

Blake Harris: Tell me a little bit about the division of labor on a project. Do you guys have formalized responsibilities, or does it change with each project?

Ru Kuwahata: I think the roles are generally defined, although on each project we might shift. But when we first started working together, there was a feeling like: oh shoot, we overlap too much in our specialty as freelancers. We were both more into design than animation. So what ended up happening was we both taught ourselves some different things and developed a pipeline where we pass responsibilities back and forth.

Max Porter: Yeah. In the beginning of every project, we’re always writing together and deciding what the shots are. The storyboards, the animatic, the writing; those are all collaborative. Then once we move into production, Ru takes over the design. Then once we go into the photography and the lighting, I take over that. Ru really has the say over the character animation; I’ll have the say over inanimate object animation and the special effects. Then I’ll do the compositing and editing and most of the post. So it really is a bouncing back and forth.

Blake Harris: Once you guys have a pretty thorough script down on the page, how much do your projects end up changing? Do you guys stick pretty closely? Or is it really more just a compass that’s guiding you?

Max Porter: It’s different for every projects. I’ll give a few examples. Like Something Left Something Taken, we had a general outline, but a lot of it was written in the recording sessions actually. We improvised certain lines. We looked at what we had and then we built an animatic around that. Between Times was a really hard project to write because we started off with a totally different project and then it evolved. Like the script totally changed.

Ru Kuwahata: [cracking up]

Max Porter: But with both those projects, once that animatic was down, it didn’t change much from that point. So we’re talking 9-12 months just for the writing and the animatic.

Blake Harris: What did Between Times start out as?

Max Porter: I don’t’ want to say exactly because I like the project and still might want to do it one day.

Ru Kuwahata: He keeps saying that! [mocking Max] “Maybe for our next project…”

Blake Harris: That’s hilarious.

Max Porter: I really like the original version. But suffice to say it was a really depressing story. It was a downer. And part of the reason we abandoned it was not because it was a bad story or didn’t have potential, it was just that we didn’t feel like working on a project like that at that point in our lives.

Ru Kuwahata: Winter was coming. It was so dark! It was a depressing story.

Max Porter: To make it simple: the original story was about two clocks falling out of sync. We changed it so that it was about two clocks falling in sync.

Blake Harris: One last question for you two: as a viewer, whenever I watch one of your projects—whether it’s an independent film like Something Left, Something Taken or commercial project, like your ad for Ben & Jerry’s—I feel a strong sense of joy and magic and wonder. Your work always puts a smile on my face and makes me feel at ease. Is that intentional? Like are those emotions an objective of yours?

Ru Kuwahata: I don’t know if we ever talked about it. Have we?

Max Porter: This is a great question.

Ru Kuwahata: [laughing]

Max Porter: I don’t think there’s ever a conscious “we want you to feel this way.” But I think there’s a sensibility that we tend to get across. I don’t know if it was ever necessarily by choice, but it’s very much our sensibility. And I think that comes from, I don’t know, kind of just the conversation that we have together. That back and forth, I guess, makes the work the way it is. But I don’t think we ever set out to make people feel a certain way because that’s really a personal thing that the audience should take away.

Ru Kuwahata: I also feel like…we’re kind of crazy. We don’t really do anything except to work on our projects. The other day someone said to me, “You have no life, you’re just zombies.” And I thought, “That’s actually kind of true.” [laughs] That’s kind of how we are. But we are having a lot of fun because we find joy in small things. Like lately our conversation is that no matter where we go, we keep running into this man with two white dogs. Since we moved to France, we hadn’t found that man, but a couple of nights ago we run into this man and turn to each other and say “Finally, we found him in this scene!” So we have all these small things that are part of our universe. So when people hear our conversations, they look at us like what the hell are you talking about? But we giggle at these small things.

Blake Harris: I sincerely hope that never changes. That’s wonderful to have that little universe of your own.

Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata: Thank you.

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Interview: Tiny Inventions On Mixed Media appeared first on IdeaRocket.

For those unfamiliar with David Lynch, he’s a renowned filmmaker whose surrealistic style has been captivating (and confusing) viewers since 1977. He’s directed six Oscar-nominated films (including The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive), created cult TV shows (like Twin Peaks) and crafted dozens of shorts, music videos and media projects.

Honors aside, Lynch’s work—known for its dream imagery, non-sequiturs and moments of vivid gore—has a reputation for puzzling audience members. To the point where some viewers must imagine that his idea-generation process involves throwing darts. Which makes it all the more interesting to get a glimpse inside his head and an animated look at his creative process.

The post PICK OF THE WEEK: Where Do Great Ideas Come From? appeared first on IdeaRocket.

We’ve all heard that expression and undoubtedly experienced variations of this adage-in-action at various points throughout our lives. But, as adults, most of us have probably forgotten how silly those words sounded to us when we were kids. Careful? About what we wish for? What could possibly go wrong?! Well, our PICK OF THE WEEK—a 3D animated short called Spellbound—attempts to answer those questions and brings this old adage to life in a thoughtful and endearing manner.

Spellbound was created by Ying Wu and Lizzia Xu as their thesis project at Ringling College of Art and Design. In this animated short film, little sister Rene, who is jealous of her seemingly perfect sibling, must grapple with the monsters that are unleashed after her jealousy literally comes to life before her eyes.

spellbound from WuXu Production on Vimeo.

Credits: 

• A Film by Ying Wu and Lizzia Xu
• Music by Garrett Crosby
• Sound Design by Glenn Goa
• Faculty Advisor: Heather Thomson
• Pre-Production Instructor: Jeremy Cantor
• Visual Development Advisor: Jon DiVenti

Simple and Elegant Personification (via Character Animation)

There’s a lot to love about Spellbound, particularly when it comes to character animation. Little Rene is adorable with her big glasses, blue barrette and scrunched-up face. Perfect sister Sunny is, well, perfect; she looks kind and contagiously optimistic (though, seeing her through Rene’s eyes, we can understand why that might be annoying!). So the two leads of this animated short are wonderful and yet what impressed me even more were the creatures of Hate. These guys…

Now I will admit to potential bias as I’ve always been a fan of these similar-looking Super Mario Bros. 3 villains…

That said, I do believe that the little personifications of Hate that Wu and Xu have created are notable for much more than that comparison. If for no other reason than the fact that if these characters didn’t work than the entire animated film would pretty much fall flat.

The importance of these Hate critters goes beyond just how much time they spend on screen (a lot). But it touches on the essence of what this film is about: the very real, fragile and complicated emotions of jealousy. And if the characters Wu and Xu created had felt silly, lazy or off-base, then it would be very hard to buy into the emotional through-line of this film. Which is why the balance they struck between fun and serious (and between real and cartoonish) is particularly impressive.

Also quite impressive is how they were able to evolve this character throughout the course of the animated short. A feat that, once again, is not only visually enticing, but imperative for the trajectory of the narrative. To embrace Rene’s change and our human ability to tame jealousy, we have to see that evolution unfold in a way that makes us believe.

Music And Sound Design

Other than a few Hate-muttered words, the entire audio weight of this animated short falls onto the shoulders of the music and sound design. As such, it must be noted that Garrett Crosby and Glenn Goa did an incredible job. Not only in helping to add a consistent and vivacious sensibility, but also in how—despite carrying so much weight—the audio never elbows aside the narrative for its own sake.

Narrative Resolution

Given the strength of this short’s primary characters (Rene and Sunny) and its thematic underpinnings (the jealousy-inspired Hate critters), it would have likely been possible for this animated short to hit the same beats without including Rene’s diary. Meaning that instead of seeing Rene write out her sisterly frustrations, Wu and Xu could have just shown a little monster emerge out of Rene’s frustration. But instead of taking that approach, the filmmakers decided to introduce a physical artifact to deliver the scene.

By introducing this element, not only does it help ground the story earlier on (and give a more interesting origin to the creatures of Hate), but it winds up being a wonderful device to achieve narrative resolution at the end of the film.

To see more of Lissa Xu’s work, you can visit her Vimeo page. 

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Pick Of The Week: Spellbound (3D Short) appeared first on IdeaRocket.

Ted-Ed’s What Makes Something “Kafkaesque”? is based on a lesson by writer/comedian/animator Noah Tavlin and makes for a wonderful follow-up to another Ted-Ed explainer of his called What “Orwellian” Really Means.

Both that Orwellian video, as well as “What Makes Something “Kafkaesque”? were both directed by a veteran animator by the name of Jeremiah Dickey. Since 2012, Dickey has served as an Animation Producer at Ted-Ed. Prior to that, Dickey taught at SVA, frequently collaborated with places like Hubbub and Stretch Films, while also producing a prodigious amount of other works. Such as his short film IDEATION, which premiered at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival.

Before we get into what we loved about this explainer video, let’s first answer that all-important question: What Makes Something “Kafkaesque”? Here are a few of the attributes:

• Used to describe unnecessarily frustrating and complicated experiences like being forced to navigate labyrinth’s of bureaucracy
• Typically, the whole ordeal becomes so disorienting and illogical that success becomes pointless.
• Oftentimes, the reason why this is the case is because the character is a prisoner of his or her own ego.

That’s just a surface level overview of the term. To learn more, treat yourself to five minutes of engaging information and compelling art with the full 5-minute explainer video:

Gorgeous Aesthetic (And How it Helps Build the Tone)

The look of What Makes Something “Kafkaesque”? is a bit different than most explainer videos. The illustration is much more stark and subdued than most explainers, and the animation is incrementally paced in a minimalistic dreamlike manner that seems to harken back to a time that was either long ago (or perhaps never existed at all).

Consider, for example, the opening frames:

If you don’t look closely enough, it may seem like no action is taking place. And even when there is obvious movement, the characters and objects move with no more than a cautious glide…

As for my comment about it harkening back to a time long ago, or one that perhaps never existed at all, I suspect that’s information by this swirling motif and it’s similarity to a pair of iconic images from some time ago…

Mazes and Labyrinths

Central to the idea of something being Kafkaesque is a byzantine notion of expensive mazes and labyrinths. Unsurprisingly—being that this motif lends itself to illustration—this explainer features a lot of mazes and labyrinths. But what’s most impressive is not how well crafted Dickey’s execution is, but how shrewdly he deploys this recurring motif.

Whether it’s in a puddle of water or a battalion of watchful eyes, these mazes spring to life:

And as great as all those are, the most impressive example is one that goes beyond the conventional aesthetics. It’s a sequence that occurs at the 3:32 mark, where—from a first person POV—we experience a failed escape from a seemingly endless world of doors.

Clever, cunning and impeccably fun.

Bringing it Back to You (and Me!)

It would have been so easy for Tavlin to end his script with something along the lines of “So that’s what Kafkaesque means! Thanks for sticking around!!” But Tavlin goes above and beyond, and I don’t just mean in terms of the final lines of this explainer. I’m talking bigger, more conceptually, about what this explainer video evolves into.

Towards the end of the video, Tavlin goes beyond pure explanation. He uses the notion of Kafkaesque to serve as a prism through which we see the modern world (and ourselves). This is a bold move, but a wise one. Because it elevates this video from something purely informative to something that insightfully connects with the viewer.

The post Pick Of The Week: What Makes Something ‘Kafkaesque’? appeared first on IdeaRocket.

Should You Trust Unanimous Decisions? revolves around the “paradox of unanimity,” which is a term that was recently coined in a scientific paper co-authored by Derek Abbott, a physicist and electronic engineer at The University of Adelaide. Here’s a quick overview, in his own words, about what this concept is all about:

“If many independent witnesses unanimously testify to the identity of a suspect of a crime, we assume they cannot all be wrong,” Abbott explained to Phys.org. “Unanimity is often assumed to be reliable. However, it turns out that the probability of a large number of people all agreeing is small, so our confidence in unanimity is ill-founded. This ‘paradox of unanimity’ shows that often we are far less certain than we think.”

In this explainer video, that concept is beautifully brought to life by Brett Underhill, a Brooklyn-based animator and illustrator. Given the grace that glides through this explainer, it should come as no surprise to learn that Underhill is no stranger to explainer videos. His portfolio includes several impressive explainers that cover a diverse range of topics. Such as:

• Why Do Some People Go Bald? (4:48)
• How To Get Divorced (3:18)
• The Wars that Inspired Game of Thrones (6:00)

All of those are worth checking out (especially that last one, if you care about the Starks, Martells or Lannisters!) but today we’ll be focusing on this one…

3 Things We Loved About This Explainer

1. The Introduction: A few weeks ago, in Baiting the Hook: 6 Ways to Start Your Explainer With a Bang, we discussed how important it is that an explainer video open strong and explored some approaches to help accomplish this endeavor. We bring this up because the opening of this explainer ambitiously attempts to combine three of the items on our list (“A Startling Fact,” “A Personal Question” and “A Philosophical Question”). Weaving together disparate appeals can sometimes feel unwieldy or cumbersome, but–in one swift sequence–Should You Trust Unanimous manages to pull it off. How did they do it?

The narrative structure undoubtedly deserves a lot of credit, but it’s the animation that dazzles and smooths over any ruffles. Part of this is accomplished through the character animation, by crafting abstract–almost anonymous-looking characters– who still feel distinct:

Another way is through perspective. While, at first glance, this might appear to be a first person POV–of us being the witness, staring down the lineup–the shadowed character in front of us makes this a different perspective; one where we’re looking at someone looking at the lineup (as seen above), which adds a degree of distance that fits into the narrative.

That degree of distance also comes in handy as we further hammer home that notion of multiple views when Underhill pulls out to to show us this same (or similar) scene with 6 characters and then 10…

2. The Underrated Value of Those Quick Cutaways: The good news is that this explainer video opens very strong. The bad news is that by opening with an elongated scene (we spend the first 20+ seconds inside a police station) there’s an increased risk that the narrative may feel stagnant and that the viewer may tune out.

But that’s a risk that Should You Trust Unanimous Decisions nimbly escapes by doing something rather clever: packing a ton of cutaways into the following 20 seconds. And these aren’t just cutaways for the sake of taking the viewer elsewhere, rather each corresponds directly to the audio voicer and, taken together, helps puzzle together the larger thesis.

3. The Wonderful and Delectable Example Chosen to Represent “Cases Where You’d Expect Very Low Odds of Variability” 

We also loved this technique of, later in the video, returning to the “scene of the crime,” so to speak, but utilizing different “criminals” to make a different point…

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Pick Of The Week: Should You Trust Unanimous Decisions? appeared first on IdeaRocket.

To start the series off with a bang, we were lucky enough to sit down with Natalie Labarre. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because her enchanting short animated film Papa has been screening at festivals (and winning awards) around the globe. To learn more about the making of that film and the sources of Labarre’s inspiration, check out our interview below the jump…

Blake Harris: First off, I wanted to ask about where the inspiration came from. How did you come up with the idea for Papa?

Natalie Labarre: This was made as my graduation film, so I knew I had to come up with something. I was already making stories about my dad, so when it was time to come up with an idea that was probably on my mind.

Blake Harris: Well I’m glad you brought that up—your dad—because the film is called “Papa” and in the credits you show a picture of you, as a young girl, with your father. So I was wondering how autobiographical this film actually was.

Natalie Labarre: So, for some reason, most of my art is based on my life. And definitely my father, for some reason. Which drives my mom crazy. She’s like: hello, can you make something about me?! Like I’ve done portraits of him, for fine art. Oil paintings and that was exhibited a little bit. I don’t know, for some reason he inspires me because he’s a total character.

Blake Harris: Is he actually an inventor?

Natalie Labarre: He’s a carpenter by trade, but he’s a great artist and he’s invented machines to help with his work, like upgrades on hand tools and stuff like that. He’s a French guy—as French as you get—and he sort of doesn’t function as a normal person; he’s very creative and sometimes it gets in the way of normal life.

Blake Harris: And how realistic was the relationship, or dynamic, in the film?

Natalie Labarre: The monster game in the film—you know, where I’m on his back—that’s real. My drawing on his stuff is real (and I got in big time trouble for that). But as I said, my dad’s a great artist.  He would teach me how to sculpt and draw. And whenever I drew something, he’d always say, “Oh it could be worse.” Like that was his mentality. [laughing a little] So I just kept trying to get better so that when I showed it to him, one day he’d say, “That’s amazing!”

Blake Harris: So what did he say to this?

Natalie Labarre: Oh, he hates it.

Blake Harris: Really?

Natalie Labarre: Yeah, he totally hates it. [speaking in a thick French accent] “I look like a fool! You make me look stupid and abusive.” Not good. [laughing]

Blake Harris: I can’t believe that! [sarcastic] Now I understand why there’s no dialogue in the film!

Natalie Labarre: [laughing]

Blake Harris: Tell me a little about that, actually. What made you decide not to have dialogue in your film?

Natalie Labarre: Oh, my stuff never has dialogue. I’ve just always been more comfortable with that for some reason. Maybe because I’m inspired by Charlie Chaplin and elements physical comedy. I don’t know exactly. But I tend to like for my stories to rest on facial expressions rather than words.

Blake Harris: Which, over the course of 6 minutes, I imagine became a challenge. Tell me about some of the other challenges of making Papa

Natalie Labarre: One of the big challenges was to make a living when I was making it. I’d work on the film about half the day, and then the other half I’d do odd-jobs, sometimes not even animation-related. Another challenge was the digital animation. In school, the focus was traditional animation on paper, which I really appreciate, but making a 6 minute film on paper… there was just no way. I would end up with piles and piles of paper to make this thing! So I needed to go digital, and that transition was tougher for me than I expected.

Blake Harris: Which program did you end up using?

Natalie Labarre: The program I used was called TVPaint. It was a fairly new program and I’d heard a lot of good things about it, but the problem was that nobody knew how to use it! Lucky, one of my friends—who I thanked in the credits, her name is Mari Jaye Blanchard—she spent several hours helping me out.

Blake Harris: Do you have a favorite part of the film?

Natalie Labarre: Definitely the dancing. It’s my favorite part to watch and it was my favorite part to animate.

Blake Harris: Great. And just one last question: now that the film has screened at several locations and has gotten so much nice feedback online, I was wondering if you had a favorite reaction (or reactions) that stood out in your mind?

Natalie Labarre: Since it tends to screen for kids, I’ve been super lucky to have juries and audiences who are entirely children. And they ask the most awesome questions; things like, “Do you not have a mom?” I do, she’s just not in it!

Blake Harris: Haha.

Natalie Labarre: The kids also want to know if I really got hurt when I fell. And I say, “No, I was okay.” Or they want to know what flavor the ice cream in the film is. Just all these really important questions. I think in the future I’ll definitely make stuff for kids because that’s more my mentality. It’s just so much fun.

Blake Harris: One more question: did you set out to make a kids film? Or did it just turn out that the animated film you made happened to be perfect for kids?

Natalie Labarre: I didn’t! It’s just that I’m super immature and that little girl is how I see myself if I’m not looking in the mirror. That’s where I’m at. So it was definitely not intended for kids. But when it was done I was like: Oh man, I made a kids film! And I’m so happy about that. 

To learn more about Natalie Labarre’s work, you can visit her on vimeo or tumblr. You can also follow her on twitter at @fattnatt. And if you are interested in animation for business, check out our work!

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Interviews With Animators: Natalie Labarre appeared first on IdeaRocket.

This video is a Ted-Ed Original, based on a lesson by Claudia Aguirre and animated by Josephine Mark. Below, we’ll discuss a few of the things that we loved about Mark’s exciting and insightful animation. But before we get into that, there were a few particularly relevant facts that we wanted to highlights:

• According to this explanation video, adults need 7-8 hours of sleep per night
• In the United States, it’s estimated that 30% of adults are sleep deprived (which ultimately affects learning, memory, mood and reaction time)
• Studies show that chronically sleeping fewer than 6 hours a night increases stroke risk by 4.5 times.

 Click on the video below to watch the full explanation video:

Credits:

• Claudia Aguirre Educator
• Josephine Mark Animator
• Lisa LaBracio Director
• Carlos Palomares Composer
• Emma Bryce Script Editor

3 Things We Loved About This Explainer Video

1. Leads by Examples: Not many explainers include specific anecdotes or examples. Mostly because, in the average video, there simply isn’t enough time. But when there is enough time, and when it’s executed well, a good example or two can be an invaluable way to bring viewers into your story and provide context for the overall message.

To better understand the potential of this approach (and also the fragility of utilizing anecdote), let’s take a closer look at the example from the very beginning of this video. We are told that in 1965 a high school student “stayed awake for 11 days to see how he’d cope without sleep,” and are then slowly informed about the repercussions. The first key to why this anecdote works lies in the second half of that opening sentence. The how, which accomplishes a couple of things:

• By not revealing right away what happened next, this anecdote immediately  earns our curiosity.
• By opening with what appears to be a non-judgmental fact, the video simultaneously begins to by the trust of the viewer. We sit down, settle in and feel like we are being told a story whose facts will speak for themselves.

Meanwhile, the video also does something clever visually. Instead of presenting us with an illustration of the specific high school soon, we are instead introduced to the repercussions of sleep deprivation via more universal: images of body parts.

By pairing the audio and visual in this manner, viewers are able to enter this narrative with a sense of curiosity, but still maintain an ability to personally relate with the message ahead.

2. A Sense of Honesty and Authenticity: My biggest fear going into this video was that it would be overly preachy (i.e. sleep = good, awake = bad), but I was pleasantly surprised the consistent sense of honesty that I felt from start to finish.

The did-you-know, down-to-earth tone of the narrator goes a long way in establishing this tone, but so too does the visual construction of characters and scenes.

For example, check out how the sleep deprived humans are depicted.

They look like…actual humans. Yes, there are bags under their eyes and they are a little bit grumpy, but for the most part they like ordinary people. This may not seem significant, but think about how often we are presented with images of cartoonishly miserable people when they are meant to represent something negative.

Even later on, when we are given a head-to-head comparison, the difference isn’t too drastically sensationalized. The only major difference is the eyes, but as a credit to the filmmakers this is a motif they’ve set up and carried through since the opening scene.

3. A Tactful Use of the Extraordinary: As far as 2-D character animation goes, The Effects of Sleep Deprivation is pretty grounded. For the most part, we get the sense that these characters exist in a world like ours and are bound by similar physics and psychology.

That said, there are a few notable moments throughout the video where realism is tossed out the window. What’s great about these sporadic instances is how the extraordinary elements are actually used to service the story.

For instance, at the :37 second mark, we are not only shown that hallucination may be a side-effect, but we are subtly flashed with an example:

And then just as quickly as the pink elephant arrives arrives, this flicker of hallucination is gone.

Another great example occurs at 2:54. Here a character’s head is “opened up” to show the audience his brain.

Not only is this a fun image, but from a narrative standpoint is used to take us inside the brain and help explain some of the harder science.

Without that segue, it’s much more likely the scientific explanation would have flown over our heads. All of which is a pleasant reminder that when a explainer video is working at it’s best, it’s able to successfully fuse together image, audio, story and message.

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Pick Of The Week: The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation appeared first on IdeaRocket.

Blake: You’re an animator—a great one—so I wanted to start off by asking how you got into animation? Was it something that you’ve always had a passion for?

Scott: When I was probably around 11 years old, I tried doing my own animations. I tried animating Batman. Just a simple thing—running. But I had no reference to try and do that so I was pretty much making it up on my own. And I was doing it on graph paper.

Blake: How did it go?

Scott: I totally failed at it. So that was really kind of my first try, my first foray into it. I had these books that showed “How To Draw People” How to build up from a stick figure into an actual person. So, you know, I was a kid living in small town in Ohio—this tiny place called Ashtabula—and just trying to figure it out on my own.

Blake: Back in Ohio—this being in an era before the Internet and a widespread Do-It-Yourself spirit—how did you go about teaching yourself?

Scott: Well, I was really fascinated by shows where they showed how things get made. Like those programs that would take you inside Walt Disney studios and show you how things were made. And another one I was fascinated by big-time was the behind-the-scenes feature about the making of Star Wars. Because, you know, I just didn’t understand how they were doing it. I mean, I knew they didn’t actually go to space, of course, but it looked very real. So after seeing behind-the-scenes things like that, it just started to create this big question mark above my head. How did they do that? Or that? And so I just kept on trying to learn, but it wasn’t until I got to college where I realized: maybe this is something I could do.

Blake: And what was it in college that made you feel that way?

Scott: I had a teacher named Mark Marek, who was teaching 3D. So I actually started out animating in 3D. It was very rudimentary back then. were using a software called Crystal Topaz, which I don’t think anybody has heard of these days. And while this was going on, Mark was in the process of starting a show on Nickelodeon called KaBlam! and so a year or two down the road he called me up and said “Hey, do you want to work on KaBlam!?”

Blake: And, just like that, you became a professional animator! When was that?

Scott: That was ’95. And not long after starting that job, I started to realize how rich 2D animation could be. So I kind of abandoned what I was doing in 3D because of that, and also because, on a home computer at that time, there were limits to what you could do in a 3D environment  You could make a car. You could make a space ship. You could make a robot. But having something move, organically, was kind of limited. So I gravitated towards 2D and really enjoyed learning what could be done in After Effects.

Blake: How long did you work on KaBlam!?

Scott: I was only the show for its first season. And after that I moved to a company in midtown—between 5^th and Broadway—called Magnet Pictures. Their claim to fame was the credit sequences for both The Nanny and The Rosie O’Donnell Show. So after I joined Magnet, I worked on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and did, I think, four openers for them. And we got nominated for, and won, two Emmys.

Blake: Really?

Scott: Yeah. So I have two statues at home.

Blake: And during this time period—in either 2D or 3D–did you have favorite animated movies or TV shows? Like Toy Story? Batman The Animated Series?

Scott: Well I thought Batman the Animated Series was very smartly designed. I really felt like it was a quantum leap forward in, say, superhero comics. It was dark, it was gritty, and it referred a lot to Art Deco. It seemed to solve this long running problem of how to translate realistic ink drawings into something that worked inside your television set. I was also a follower of Pixar back in. My first exposure to them was in 1989. I was in the military, stationed in San Diego, when I saw a short film they did at that year’s Spike and Mike show.

Blake: Spike and Mike? What’s that?

Scott: It was an annual festival of animation. It would collect shorts from various studios and independent animators and it would just do a show on it. Pixar’s entry in that was a little film called Tin Toy. And I was blown away by it.

Blake: Wait, did you say you were in the military just above?

Scott: After high school, yeah. My dad had actually been in the military and after high school I joined the Navy with some friends of mine from Ohio. I started out in Philadelphia and then the ship I was on went around the tip of South America and, after that, we were stationed in San Diego. I was in the Navy for five years total.

Blake: And what happened at the end of those five years? Was your service up, or did you consciously make the decision to leave?

Scott: I made the decision. At that point, I wanted to go to college. I wanted to go to design school. So I drove cross-country and about 9 months later I ended up at Parsons in New York. I just really enjoyed it; it really expanded the range of what I could do.

Blake: So you now had an education and a few gigs in the industry, but you were still a single guy living in New York.

Scott: In Brooklyn, actually.

Blake: You were a single guy living in Brooklyn. How did that change? How did you meet your future wife?

Scott: It was fifteen years ago, so I must have been 33 at the time. And I was at home, bored, and in the mood to see a movie. I didn’t even really care what the movie was so I decided to go see Species 2.

Blake: A classic…

Scott: It was horrible.  But before the movie, I went to this restaurant just up the street from the theater. And she was a waitress there. I had with me a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which I’d never read before. So I was sitting at the bar and digging into that when she saw the book and said “Oh, what’s this?” And we started talking. She had a bachelor’s in film directing, so she was able to talk about movies quite a bit. And I’m obviously quite a big movie buff. So we hit it off and went on our first date a couple weeks later.

Blake: And years later, you would have two wonderful sons who you’d soon dazzle with an awesome homemade Star Wars movie.

Scott: [laughter] Yup! They love Star Wars (and so do I).

Blake: Who doesn’t? But I’m wondering…it’s now been 35+ years since the original trilogy came out. As someone who was inspired by Star Wars and who tells stories for a living, I wanted to ask why do you think the movies, the characters—the whole franchise and property—is still so popular today?

Scott: I think part of that has to do with the time period when it was made. There were a lot of movies that were really quite revolutionary being made at that time. The Godfather. Superman. Jaws. So there was a different mindset about moviemaking that was happening.

Blake: And how would you describe that mindset? What was being done differently than the movies that came before?

Scott: I think it was how those movies were able to pull the audience into a real environment. I’m not saying the premises of these movies were particularly realistic, but the way everyone acted in that movie world felt real and believe. Superman, this longstanding comic book character, he suddenly became a believable in Richard Donner’s film. That was even their tagline: you will believe a man can fly. And you did.

Blake: That’s a great point.

Scott: And I think that’s the same reason JJ Abrams movies work today (and probably why he was picked to direct the new Star Wars movie). He’s able to pull people into a real environment and make something believable.

Blake: Speaking of believability and storytelling, the last question I had for you was this. Whether you were living in Ohio, San Diego, New York or somewhere else, how have you been able to hone your talent as a storyteller? How does one learn this skill?

Scott: Well, you see a lot of bad movies.

Blake: [laughter]

Scott: It’s kind of true, though. If you just take that a bad movie—or a bad story of any kind—at face value then you’re never going to grow from that. Instead, you have to ask yourself why didn’t this movie work? Where did things go wrong? What aspects here helped and which hurt?

Blake: Great point. So what about with Star Wars? For example, why did The Phantom Menace fail where a film like The Empire Strikes Back succeeded?

Scott: I think that in The Phantom Menace the filmmakers took a lot for granted. They assumed that we would just simply care about these characters and that by throwing in ludicrous things that they’d be able to get a laugh. Like: insert Jar Jar Binks and you’ll laugh here and here and here. But nobody did. Because the joke wasn’t funny. So there’s that, plus film doesn’t pay enough attention to telling a full story; going from Point A to B to C. They didn’t ask themselves: How can we up the ante in the drama of the story? How can we improve upon what we did in the previous movie? They thought: we’ll just throw a lot of money at this. But that just doesn’t work because audiences can’t be fooled. As much as we all like funny and pretty things, what we really like most of all is a good story. And that’s what matters most.

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Q&A With Scott Strong, IdeaRocket Animation appeared first on IdeaRocket.