Life is Better with Art in it

Well, the contest is all over, so it's safe to put this up now.

Behold! My entry for the "Design your own Poster" Contest for the art institute, with the theme of "Life is better with art in it. I didn't win national, but I did win $3000 from local, making it the best poster entry in the San Francisco area..... Wow... Maybe there weren't enough people entered?

Anyways, I decided to go with the whole executive vs designer, business vs creativity motif. I'd explain it, but... I'm sleepy. It just has to do with how the characters look. One looks realistic, but lacks artistic vision, the other doesn't look so real... and yet... he jumping out at you, form vs function, believability over realism.

Getting what the camera can't get. That's the old Animation dictum And to those who think you can improve your animation skills by drawing realistic, I have to say, you're wrong. Really wrong. Life drawing IS important though, understanding anatomy, human emotions, it's all important yes, because it helps us understand the things that our audiences can relate to, and you can use these skill when you're doing a far-out character, but we're not cameras. Animation needs to have a certain degree of playfulness to it, if you make it way too real and way to serious, it might be as fun as a lecture. Doesn't get much real or serious than that, and mostly likely you and your audience will get bored because the audience isn't thrilled with super-realism in animation, and you won't have fun animating, for sure, too many rules to follow and it won't give you much room to work with, and the rules of animation are always open for breaking.

Another thing to remember, is empathy. No matter how odd the art direction is in an animation, you can get believabilty, the emotional connection between audience and character, resulting in a character we flee for because we feel the character truly exists. Empathy is key, paramount. Emotion is what drives animation, along with story, and it should be empathy that all you future animators should study...

Right. Goodnight.