from live-action, be it creating whole new
worlds that aren’t drawn from reality and
evoke nostalgia.”
The simplicity and that warmth animation
can sometimes bring also appeals to
brands that have to explain or sell abstract
ideas, explains London-based filmmaker Milo
Targett. “It humanises what can often be seen
as a faceless entity. I also like to think that
some companies genuinely want to invest in
an animator/illustrator and see them thrive
and make great work.”
ENGAGING CHARACTERS
Working mostly with character animation
and offbeat surreal narratives, Milo uses 3D
software in an experimental way to bridge
the gap between his drawings and the digital.
“I think chasing a certain trend is a recipe for
failure. It’s interesting how styles come and go
in cycles; the longer you’re in the industry the
more you see that, I think. There’s a healthy
need in the industry for 2D and 3D work –
both have their place.”
Ingi shares this view. “We’re seeing a lot
more narrative-based character work these
days, whereas a couple of years ago the
majority of our work was more about abstract
graphics.” Animation enables you to bring ideas
and visuals to life that you wouldn’t normally
be able to create with live action, he argues.
“It allows brands to tap into more expressive
styles. Sometimes brands use surreal themes
to sell their products and services. It also helps
that animation can be cheaper than a large
shoot with expensive talent,” Ingi adds.
Over the past 12 months Golden Wolf has
worked with some of the most iconic brands
in the world, including KFC, Blizzard, Disney,
Amazon, Adidas and Supercell. “Advertising is
still a large part of the work that we do, but the
biggest by far is gaming,” he says. “I’d say that
the gaming industry probably has the biggest
appetite for high-quality animated content at
the moment.”PSYCHEDELIC WORLDS
Chicago-based filmmaker and animator
Shane Beam makes a variety of 2D animation
including music videos, gif illustrations,
animated shorts and occasional motion
graphics, alongside the odd independent films
and illustrations. “Animation visually explains
a lot of feelings that can’t really be explained
otherwise,” says Shane. “My animation
certainly visually explains a lot of my feelings
that would definitely be balled up and ignored
otherwise. Literally anything is possible in
animation, so it just hits differently than real
life and is able to reach places we can’t.”ANIMATION NOWSURREAL ANIMATION
WHY NOT MAKE USE OF THE MEDIUM THAT
BRINGS OFF-BEAT CONCEPTS TO LIFE?A new wave of oddball and slightly strange
characters have been unleashed through
the medium of animation in recent years,
with creatives such as Julian Glander and
Kirsten Lepore bringing their own brand
of bizarre weirdness into the mainstream.
Animator Milo Targett explores off-
beat character relations that often lean
into the absurd and the surreal. His work
focuses on the experimental use of 3D
software with a grounding in illustrative
2D design principles. He was recently
commissioned by Adult Swim to create a
short inspired by the brief Patterns. “It
was a challenging project and pushed me
to do things I probably should have been
doing before, like rigging a full character
with a bone structure in Cinema 4D.”
After a week spent thinking of
different ideas, he came back to the
one he’d started with: exploring the way
bodies can be broken down into a series
of patterns. One early idea focused on
how computers perceive the world and
faces through pattern recognition. “This
developed into the film, which is about
how distracting it would be to perceive all
the cells and folds of skin patterns across
people’s faces,” explains Milo.
“I’ve always tried to replicate my
drawing style in 3D, so a lot of the way
I make work stems from this. Things
like wanting to have organic-looking
characters that seem lumpy and fleshy led
me to use more box modelling in my work.
“Creating a longer-form piece was
great and having to pitch the concept to
Adult Swim helped me work through my
own ideas and made the project stronger
for it. It involved a lot of strange camera
work and perspective/size changes,
which were tricky to string together in a
cohesive way.”