VideoAnimation Trends

If you’ve noticed more and more animated content over the last few years - especially online- you’re not alone. Rapid advancements in technology are allowing artists to create amazing and wholly original animated content with nothing more than a laptop. Of course, some movie studios (i.e., Disney) are paving the way with proprietary software, but amateur creatives are also latching on to trends to share their stories with the world.

This eBook takes a look at recent trends in video animation, why they’ve become so popular, and even offers some ideas on how a budding animator can put them to good use.

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Video Animation Trends

The 80s are back in a major way. The synthesizers, big hair, and bright colors that defined that decade can be found on just about every fashion runway or music video today. Of course, the nostalgia for this decade has crept into animation in the form of 8-bit-style videos.

8-bit videos take their inspiration from classic video games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man to create an aesthetic that is both playful and accessible. For instance, the YouTube channel for movie fans CineFix has created 8-bit versions of cinematic classics like Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and The Avengers. Best of all, you don’t need to be a video game programmer from the 80s to create these videos; you can use programs like After Effects to do so.

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8-Bit Videos

Disney’s Big Hero 6 was one of the biggest movies of 2014, and it even managed to score the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. What you may not know about the blockbuster film is that it utilized a totally new type of animation to make the world of that movie vivid.

The Los Angeles Times recently wrote about Hyperion, a proprietary Disney software that “simulates the physics of light” and “can make animated films more lifelike or give them an otherworldly look.” The creators of the film used the software to capture the particular West Coast light of the film’s fictionalized version of San Francisco (cleverly renamed San Fransokyo) and to capture the brilliance of the neon signs that decorate its streets at night.

While you may have a hard time getting your hands on Hyperion in the near future (if ever), it’s a sign that animators are trying to make their imaginary worlds look as realistic as possible.

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Disney’s Hyperion

This Asian comic book-style art form has been popular overseas for decades, but in the last several years, Americans - especially adolescents - have fallen in love with the vibrancy of the form. In fact, anima cartoons are more popular than ever. Anime style content can be found in mainstream places like the Cartoon Network, San Diego Comic Con, and even on the shelves of your local bookstore. Anime plots almost always deal with dreamy romance or high-stakes action, making it one of the rare styles of animation that is closely tied to certain narrative themes.

Anime is primarily defined as a drawing style, so if you can master its idiosyncrasies - big eyes, bright colors, glamorous hair - you’re on your way to creating something that is faithful to the original art form.

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Amine

The magic of animation lies in its ability to somehow make a drawing seem incredibly real, while still somehow looking like a drawing. This fine line of the real and the fantastic is what makes the art so thrilling.

Non-photo realistic rendering (or NPR, as it is often called) takes animation and somehow makes it feel even more animated. If it sounds complicated, Creative Bloq has an example of a piece done for sharing economy pioneers Airbnb that shows it off nicely. It essentially a step backwards, for nostalgia’s sake, of animated films that clearly looked animated, hence the name “non-photo realistic rendering.”

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Non-Photo Realistic Rendering

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Non-Photo Realistic RenderingThe world of animation has benefitted greatly from the technological advances of the last twenty years. There have been plenty of milestones because of this, such as Pixar’s Toy Story being the first feature-length computer-animated film. But with these advancements, the industry has seen a move away from style of animation that feel like they were created by a human hand. While which you prefer is a matter of taste and context, the rise of NPR suggests animators and audiences alike are looking for alternatives to the crisp, clean, almost video game-like worlds of computer animated films.

The site Creative Bloq calls this out as another recent trend that, while similar to NPR, is an even more clear salute to old-school forms of drawing and creation like watercolor painting, puppetry and even graffiti.

By utilizing state of the art animation software, animators are able to digitally create videos in which the characters look like puppets, or the scenes dissolve into one another in a swirl of watercolors.

Like NPR, these organic-minded videos suggest that animators are embracing the craft’s artificial tenets over the hyperrealistic and fluid animation you’d see in many popular computer animated videos to day.

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Organic Influences

If you’re looking to create a video for personal use or for your brand, any one of the trends we mentioned above might be right for you. As with anime, what you end up settling on may ultimately decide on your message or goal.

If you’re looking for inspiration, you may want to look at animated videos made by notably brands in the past. Chipotle’s “Back to the Start” is a beautiful example of using organic influences and stop motion-style animation to create a video that is compelling, beautiful, and ties in to the overall message of the video. This commercial for Canadian wireless company Saskel uses Pixar-style computer animation to create wonderful short film that offers up a gorgeous and realistic take on winter.

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Which One is Right For You?

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