The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) is in the process of renovating The Old Telegraph Building in White River Junction, Vermont. They are currently running a campaign to raise the last $500,000 needed to get this project across the finish line. As part of the campaign, CCS hired alum Mitra Farmand '13 to make a drawing of the renovated building based on the architectural plans.
The idea then came up to have me animate Mitra's drawing, showing the building being used throughout a year. This process was art directed by my coworkers Michelle Ollie and Jarad Greene.
I started by recoloring the original illustration for different times of day/night and various seasons. I then overlaid various animated elements: geese flying south in the late fall, snow in the winter, rain in the spring, and a spinning sun in the summer. Lastly I added some simple stick-figure characters inspired by the "Make A World" book by Ed Emberley which we use each year for an early assignment at CCS. These are colored-coded to show their roles: first year students, second year students, faculty and staff members, and folks from the local community. It's subtle, but if you watch the video above, there is a little narrative that quickly unfolds!
There were so many fun ideas for this project, probably the hardest part was paring it down to a simple form that kept the focus on the building. Perhaps we'll return to this idea later on and explore more of those concepts in some future videos!
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