abstract animation

No Characters? No Problem

For me personally, character-based illustration, design and animation is where it's at. Injecting that life into characters is both what interests me as an artist and as a consumer. So when the powers that be at Posh Gecko tasked me with doing a more abstract B2B explainer video for Trident Group, the challenge was 'how can I inject life, energy and character into an animation without any characters?'

Lucky for me, Trident Group have a great set of brand guidelines, drawing focus with a small set of bold colours against a near-black background with pops of white. Their logo also features a coloured full stop, which gave me the idea to feature dots and circles in Trident's various brand colours streaking forwards throughout the animation acting as a focus or anchor point. This gives a sense of continuity throughout the animation and enables the viewer to follow the narrative in a linear fashion. Such abstract features allowed for a lot of creative scope, in some sections the dots collide with elements and stroke or colour-fill them, they push icons or burst against them. In sections like the Pacman-esque scene and the mountain climbing scene, the dots are even anthropomorphised to a degree, making the video on the whole a bit more entertaining and personable and satisfying my little obsession with character animation.

Future projects

A far cry from any animation I'd done previously, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this project and how pleased I am with the end result. I'm looking forward to taking on similar projects and straying even further out of my comfort zone in future.