If you have a tricky concept to convey, whether medical, mechanical or theoretical, you’ll recognise the bemused expression of someone who’s lost the thread and is too polite to ask you to clarify for fear of appearing stupid.
Thanks to having been raised by clowns, I have no such qualms. I’ll ask and ask again until I understand, then I distill that process into a simple, beautiful animation. By helping me understand, your audience will understand.
Animation can be an artform, but when used to illustrate concepts, artistry must yield to design. It has to be clear, unambiguous, and the key to this is, as any stand-up comic well tell you, is to know your audience. Often, I’m the audience - an interested party, with a stake in understanding the concept, but without the necessary knowledge.
However if yours is a complex process, and the audience is perhaps hostile or unengaged, as with the danger posed by man-made climate change, simply explaining the concept isn’t sufficient. We need to engage them in the process, make it relevant to them.
2D animation when used to explain concepts, is essentially a diagram in motion. It can have a pleasing simplicity, a universality and ages well in comparison to video. I’ve known clients to balk at the thought of what is essentially a cartoon, but don’t be fooled, cartoons have secret access to our brains through a childhood of Saturday morning entertainment.
Quirky, whimsical videos win our hearts with their look, which makes it easier to win our minds with their content. Especially if they feature polymath and childhood hero of many - Johnny Ball.
It’s worth taking a little detour here to say that the importance of the voice can’t be underestimated. Animation without sound is like one of those dreams where you’re naked at school - horrible to contemplate.
Add sound and the viewer is engaged. Feature a voice that tingles its way past our cynical, oversaturated senses and the viewer will be entranced! Thanks to home studios, there are a dizzying array of options available, my advice is to avoid the trap most businesses fall into, hiring a ‘businesslike’ voice. The great orators and salespeople don’t talk to us like the physical embodiment of an institution, they invite us in, they are idiosyncratic and memorable. Look for a distinctive voice.
3D animation is a superb tool. When the diagram on the page simply won’t convey a complex process, I add not just one, but 2 extra dimensions. Who doesn’t want more space and time?!
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