I mentioned a while back that I was pretty busy working on an animation project. Well, here it is! This video was created for Google, which was pretty dang exciting in and of itself. It’s an instructional video aimed to help new or less experienced internet users access Google with ease. I did the character design and animation, working as part of an amazing creative team at Instrument.  It was my first real dive into animation, and I loved it! Animation was a career I dreamed about as a kid, maybe more even than comics. I drew flip books, copied drawings from The Illusion of Life, and drank in every detail when we toured the Disney animation studios in Orlando. I remember watching an animated short of a flour sack in a penny arcade at Walt Disney World and being mesmerized (apparently the “flour sack” is a common animation exercise, but I was fascinated that I could feel anything for a loosely sketched piece of burlap. Illusion of life, indeed!) Somewhere along the way I realized the insane amount of work that went into animation, and when it came time to choose a career I felt that illustration was more realistic as a one-woman pursuit. Not because I don’t want to put in the work (goodness knows that it takes countless hours to make a graphic novel) but it didn’t seem like an efficient way for one person to tell a story. Still, working on this project touched a little bit of my childhood soul that I had more or less swept out of mind. There is something thrilling about seeing a drawing (well really, hundreds of drawings) come to life. It’s magic (and probably the only time I can use that word without excusing its cheesiness.) and it was an incredible experience to rekindle some of that fascination, as an adult. Anyway, those are my post-animation thoughts. I really hope to do more!

Did I mention how awesome it was to work with Instrument? These people are amazing.