Hasta La Motion!

Jonathan Jarvis burst onto the scene (or at least onto Motionographer’s homepage) back in 2009, when he created an extremely helpful 10-minute animation, “The Crisis of Credit Visualized.” The short film used iconographic imagery, concise narration and simple animation to explain how the 2008 credit debacle began. In addition to clearing up a lot of confusion, it was a powerful example of motion design’s ability to inform and educate general audiences about topics that might otherwise be impenetrable.

Jonathan is back, this time partnering with Ray Dalio, founder of the investment firm Bridgewater Associates — who, incidentally, had been raising the alarm about the 2008 crisis well before the actual catastrophe struck. At a staggering 30 minutes in length, “How the Economic Machine Works” (above) is based on an educational project authored by Dalio. It introduces general audiences to a cyclical model of the economy, which Dalio says is foundational to his success.

UPDATE: Props to studio Thornberg & Forester, who helped with concepting and handled all the animation, and Big Foote, who tackled the music and sound design. Sustaining the level of detail and clarity required for this project is no small feat.

While prepping for an upcoming article that I’m writing for Computer Arts magazine, I asked Jonathan Jarvis to explain why motion design is so well suited to explaining complex material like Dalio’s paper.

Jonathan Jarvis on motion design, “explainer” videos and the role of simplicity

Motion design works well for explaining complex concepts because it forces distillation. You have these concentrated visuals that communicate very quickly. The distilled visuals serve as anchors that take the heavy descriptive lifting off the narration’s shoulders, freeing it up to focus on the big picture. The narration describes some of the less tangible concepts that are difficult to visualize, and prevents the visuals from having to illustrate absolutely everything.

Pairing graphics with narration gives you a ‘the whole is more than the sum of the parts’ effect. A good animated explainer with have the narration and graphics compliment each other:

The visuals keep the details clear and the narration keeps the big picture clear.

Motion design is more effective than footage of talking heads for explaining complex concepts because the visuals are more informative and provide a better compliment to the narration. Talking head footage is mostly redundant to the narration. Imagine a video of someone talking and describing a collateralized debt obligation vs. an animated diagram of a collateralized debt obligation with the same description used as narration.

The sound design, music, and style of the graphics also play a big role. In an effort to let you focus on the big picture, I try to make every character and action look, sound, and act consistently. As the animation progresses, the characters and actions become familiar and (hopefully) intuitive. I want you to focus on the context and relationships between them instead of trying to remember who they are.

That’s one of the reasons I use very simple, graphic styles. Each character should use as little detail as possible to represent a concept. It’s the relationships between the characters and concepts that I’m trying to communicate: this-makes-that-happen. The characters aren’t the stars, the relationships between them are.

It’s different from a data-visualization. I actually try to keep numbers out of my pieces as often as possible. I try to aim for something more akin to information design or ‘knowledge design’ as I sometime call it.

Anyway, those are a few reasons I think motion design is special and has huge, barely tapped potential to help explain complex concepts, make the intangible tangible and help us understand our complicated world.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Posted on Motionographer

One of animation’s greatest strengths is its ability to simplify complex systems for digestion by the widest possible audience. This is something Montreal based Atelier Transfert understands implicitly.

Their approach is very specific: Using mostly stop motion, they “can take abstract concepts and bring them into the tactile world to illustrate a very simple message. Through simple and visually entertaining analogies, we can communicate complex features.”

Case in point is their recent video explaining how Email Center Pro software works. Atelier Transfert mixes metaphor and humor to keep things simple and engaging. It’s a technique that’s harder to master than it sounds, so I thought I’d ask them a few questions about their process. Atelier Transfert’s Christian Martel graciously responded.

If Google Translate can be trusted, “Atelier Transfert” roughly translates to “Transfer Workshop.” Why did you choose that as your studio’s name?

Yes, Google Translate is accurate. ‘Atelier’ in French often suggests an artist’s workshop or practice, and ‘transfert’ means transfer, which I sort of meant as in transport—intersecting various approaches, disciplines, and media through a design process.

These stop-motion tutorials we’ve been doing lately are still very rooted in design in that they attempt to reduce a message to its simplest expression.

AT has a very specific approach—namely, using stop-motion animation for “how-to” or expository videos. Why stop-motion? Why not, for the sake of argument, 3D animation?

Initially, this allowed me to create entertaining videos within my comfort/technical knowledge zone (using good old basic graphic designer’s tools such as a digital still camera, Photoshop, and Illustrator). Afterward, I understood that you have way more control with such short cuts. In this sense, the phenomenon of manipulating time with cuts is taken to a whole new level.

The timing on the images throughout the entire clip can edited to syllable, rather than to a word or a phrase. This makes for a high impact on the educational front—especially when demonstrating a recipe or technique.

With stop-motion, you can achieve the precision of an illustrated manual with each frame. This is even more interesting than the eye candy aspect of making objects move by themselves.

Now that our approach is even more centered on photography (seriously, shooting/composing these is like a very very long photo shoot, with all the usual preoccupations and concerns with the final shot), we use remote capture software combined with Photo Mechanic to check to motion while filming. We still put together the edit in Final Cut Pro, but have also started experimenting with Dragon Stop Motion. All the colour correction and any transparency tricks are all done in Photoshop.

Do you ever get clients asking for things outside the world of stop-motion?

Not yet. Just some simple illustrations added to a stop-motion piece.

Would you ever consider doing work that wasn’t stop-motion?

Sure, we’re always eager to innovate. Plus, with the appearance of of DSLR cinematography (Canon 5D Mark II, Nikon D90) you can start to get near film-quality HD video. I love the idea of film and photography converging.

I imagine in some cases, it can be quite challenging to understand a product through the lens of a company’s brand. It sounds like it takes a lot of time and patience.

Yes, it certainly does. Before figuring out how we’re going to film, we do all that good marketing stuff too. The commercial sphere of graphic design, photography, and film has given us enough experience to make sure we achieve the branding message. Like an ad campaign, this requires a lot of initial background research before we propose a concept.

Plus, we try to adapt our video style to a company’s existing branding. In fact, although the style is similar, we rarely shoot them the same way: StartCooking is shot in natural light, Alltop was done with flash photography, and Email Center Pro was lit with modeling lights (which, by the way, tend to dim slightly around dinner time as power consumption in the building goes up).

What’s in store for the future? Any big projects coming down the pipeline? Any new ideas you want to work on?

Yes, although I don’t think I can mention it just yet. Anyway, we’ve just started with these and we’re looking to do a few more.

Posted on Motionographer