The language of colour

Colour theory is a popular idea in the visual arts; graphic designers, illustrators, animators, and painters all feel they have a good understanding of which colours "compliment" and which colours “clash”.  Colour theory is such a commonly held notion that it is taught as a subject in visual arts’ schools, however, setting the colour wheel aside, colour, its meaning, and the value it holds for us is actually not as straightforward as we may believe.  At Inklish we view colour as a tool of communication with all the complexities and subtleties that that entails.

As animators we use colours everyday to represent objects in the real world.  A red apple, a blue sky, or green for leaves but colour is not strictly a property of objects, rather it is a property of the mind.  Colour is in actuality our interpretation of different wavelengths of light and the colour we see in objects is actually the wavelength of light (or combination of) that bounces off that object. This is a pretty cool concept but doesn’t usually change the way we colour a banana.

Where it gets more squirrelly and a lot more interesting is when we start to move beyond objects and into the world of abstraction.  The expressions ‘feeling blue’ or ‘seeing red’ demonstrate our association of the colour ‘blue’ with depression and ‘red’ with anger.  The commonality of these expressions shows how strongly we take this association for granted, it’s never explained, just understood. But actually they are relatively modern and definitely culturally specific associations.  Colour is also used to represent temperature; red means hot and blue means cold right?  It is a pretty common assumption and one that is reinforced by colour coded labels everywhere, the most obvious example being the hot and cold taps in your kitchen or bathroom but this association too is not universal; there are even some countries where blue equals hot and red cold.  The abstract language of colour is one of its most interesting features as it allows us to imbue an animation with emotions like anxiety or happiness just by focusing on one palette over another. 

Colour is an amazing tool in human communication, and one that we speak everyday at Inklish. It brings objects to life, can be used to represent complex feelings and moods, or to serve as a warning of potential danger. I even read recently of a study that showed the colour of your coffee mug can affect your perception of the bitterness of your coffee!  Now that’s some meaningful science.

Animated music videos - creating harmony in song and story

When we at Inklish are animating a music video, we face unique challenges we don’t face in traditional storytelling.  Usually we look to use animation to accurately and completely tell a story, to make meaning explicit and to reinforce key messages.  But music tells a complex and asymmetric story both heavily imbued with meaning by the artist while also being a vessel for personal meaning on the part of the listener. How do you animate that?  

Scientific studies have attempted to analyse and document our positive response to music.  There is even a name for it, frisson (aesthetic chills), which describes the familiar physiological effect of goosebumps.  A study into the phenomenon showed that ‘musical changes’ e.g. volume changes or unexpected harmonies helped to create this effect.  This is something that you can reinforce as an animator.  You can use colour, a scene shift, or some other visual shift to emphasise this change. However, you need to be careful to ensure you’re not artificially creating this phenomenon i.e. it must be there in the music already.  Music is often deeply personal and as an animator you have to stay true to the intent of the artist while also providing space for the listener to connect with the music and personalise its meaning.

At Inklish we spend a lot of time working with the musician to understand and accurately convey the story within their song.  At the same time, however, we work with them to not ‘overthink’ and therefore be overly prescriptive in their storytelling. You need to provide space (as well as opportunity) for a listener to have an emotional response to a song.  

Check out some of our work on music videos to see if you agree: 

Animations make us smarter.

In classrooms, lecture halls, and corporate offices animations are the new medium of visual communication.  And why not? They are an attractive and engaging way to communicate and if a picture is worth a thousand words, an animated picture, well... that must be worth... a lot of words.

Businesses, ad agencies, and educational institutions use animation as a tool for presenting information, helping to make difficult ideas more accessible, reinforcing key messages, and teaching new processes and skills.

The reason animation has been identified as such a powerful tool is that it uses colour and movement to convey information that would otherwise have been simple text on a screen and our brains are hard wired to focus in on information that contrasts with its surroundings.  Compare this to text based information or even visually impressive but static print ads.  The same messages are there but our eyes are not drawn to it in the same way and we are less likely to take those messages in. Animation has been shown to literally make us smarter.  

There is not only an art to animation but a science and like all sciences there is a lot of research around the best way of utilising it.  Researchers have been looking at animation for awhile as a teaching tool and have identified a number of 'principles' to using the medium.  These include explicitly drawing the viewers eyes to the key messages - you can do this using the tricks of colour and movement.  And keeping it simple, which researchers call the 'redundancy principle' but we know better as 'less is more'. Lots of colour and movement may look great but it becomes a bit like noise to the brain.  You need to be selective in the aspect of the animation you choose to 'bring to life', otherwise it could be missed in the visual splendour.  

We at Inklish love animation but for us the message is the key point; animation is just the really cool tool we get to use to convey that message.

Happy Birthday “Lotte”!

You may have noticed today's (June 2nd) 'google doodle' on the early pioneer of ‘silhouette animation’ Charlotte Reiniger, we at Inklish certainly did and thought it'd be great to share a bit of her remarkable story with you.

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger was a German film director and animator. As a young girl, Reiniger was obsessed with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry.  As she grew she combined this with a love of cinema and began a career in the theatre.  Her early work got her admitted into the German 'Institute for Cultural Research' where she met a number of other artists and future creative partners. Reiniger made a number of films in this period including her most famous, the 1926 animated film 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed'. The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving animated film in the world.

When the Nazis took control of Germany, Reiniger and her husband were forced to flee as both were staunch Nazi critiques.  Unable to secure a safe place to live and work they moved from country to country in an attempt to stay ahead of the Nazi threat.  Incredibly, even during this difficult time they managed to produce about 12 films.

After the war Reiniger and her husband moved to Britain where her skills and work were again recognised and she made a number new films for organisations like the BBC.  Reiniger died in Germany in 1981.   

We think this animator and her story are incredible and encourage you to check their ‘google doodle’ homage to her work: https://www.google.com/doodles/lotte-reinigers-117th-birthday

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