Daz Yang and Bermudy Chen, the winners introduced in our previous Inside Stories, shared the importance of creating storyboards for animation projects, and recommended some great features in Animation Desk, such as the advanced onion skin and frame manager. Alejandro Garcia, the winner of iAniMagic2015, is taking us deeper into an animator’s inside world and sharing his experiences in designing video and animation projects.
South America offers spectacular natural wonders, exotic wildlife and rich cultures. Alejandro Garcia, who has lived and worked in the continent, showcased his passion to the city of Bogotá, Colombia, and dedicated his expertise in the graphic design industry. As a professional designer, Alejandro deals with a great number of tasks in his daily work and is always looking for tools that would help him speed up and improve his workflow. Introduced by his brother, who also has a particular interest in animations, Alejandro developed his interest in Animation Desk very quickly, “Suddenly, my brother, who knows my work and interest in animation, showed me the software with some examples of what he had done with it. After I just tried it out and I just loved it!!”
Being a part of the development of some educative projects and TV show ‘Sabogal’, Alejandro has demonstrated his talent and unique characteristics in the projects, but never lost his interest in traditional animations. “I always wanted to work on traditional hand-drawn animations, but my work requires me to finish the tasks quickly due to a large volume of objects. The quick turn-around has been really difficult for me over time.” Alejandro continued saying, “Which is why I am constantly on the lookout for simple tools that would allow me to work on traditional animations professionally and effectively. Then I found Animation Desk, which really is the best tool for animation making.”
One of the greatest advantages of Animation Desk is its intuitive design, we can’t emphasize enough how important that is to designers and animators. “I love the interface and portability Animation allows, because it is so intuitive and clean, and with the tablet I can carry all my animations to places and animate!”, Alejandro continued, “The layers and the table light are the tools I use most often. After identifying and drawing the key frames, I used these tools to sketch the whole animation before cleaning up. The variety set of brushes also gives different touches and feelings to the objects.”
We are happy to report that Animation Desk Team has recently released a whole new interface with sleek and elegant detailing to its iOS version, and is looking to apply the same to Android and Windows version in 2016.
The concept that ran through Alejandro’s winning project, BOXWINGS, was freedom. “The idea came to me when I first heard of the contest. Breaking free from the box, from itself and from what imprisons you.” Alejandro said, “…you can see when the character unfolded itself and got caught in the little birdcage, who exploded and flew towards the sun. I wanted something simple and poetic, so I thought about the shape of the box that created a character like what you would see in origami and just letting the character be in its own world.”
“BOXWINGS was hands down my favorite animation. It illustrates how character design, animation style and storytelling can align to produce a simple but effective piece. It shows how much thought went into the design of the bird character by the amount of emotion the simple line drawing elicits. The animation technique was breathtaking. This is a wonderful piece that really resonated with me. Amazing work!”, commented by Stephen Egts, Creative Director at Science News Magazine, who has been invited to serve on the judging panel during iAniMagic2015.
Alejandro wanted to share his concept of animation with all participants in the event, “Take care of what you are doing, no matter what it is. Maybe a short animation, maybe something experimental, or maybe some really BIG projects, always be organized with the ideas and the process that you will be going through. Clarify the purpose and the ways to get there, and for sure you will see it finalized in the way you expected, or even better.”
The Animation Desk Team would like to thank all participants in this year’s event for their active supports and everlasting creativity. We hope these stories have inspired you to participate in our next event.
See you all in iAniMagic2016.