The School of Life

New and exciting addition to the Animations for Education list I'm compiling; The School of Life. This youtube channel plays host to a variety of mini lectures dedicated to exploring emotional intelligence and education, accompanied by animations in a range of styles. This morning I watched 'Overcoming Childhood', which had some charming, playful animation going on in it.

I love the use of texture in this animation combined with very simple line animated characters who would not look out of place in a children's book (they remind me a bit of Oliver Jeffers actually). The whole film has a very whimsical quality to help ease the heaviness of the topic. There's a really nice interplay with black, grey and white line work with the light, scratchy and inky textures. The static backgrounds work really well I think because there is so much tactile quality to them; if they moved or had shake it would be too much and probably distracting.

I also think the zooms and transitions into negative colour work really well to highlight the change into internal thought vs external factors. This is where the use of black, grey and white lines works best because it helps to keep  line tonality in both the regular and negative imagery. Very cleverly designed in terms of combining visual consistency and storytelling.

I've tried similar uses of minimal characters/ backgrounds in favour of representing a vibe or feeling that mirrors the dialogue, because I think you need less when there's a clear story being told and can afford to be a bit more abstract or focused on the mood of the piece.