Ryan Woodward

        I first came across Ryan Woodward's beautifully simple animation Thought of You, as the video for the Arctic Monkey's song I Wanna Be Yours, although it was not originally created to accompany this piece of music.

 

 

        Woodward is an animator and storyboard artist who began his career working on hand drawn animations for Warner Brothers before moving into live action storyboarding for films such as Spiderman 2, Cowboys & Aliens and many of Marvel's superhero blockbusters. In a way, this short animation is the antithesis of working on storyboards, as Woodward keeps a fixed perspective and distance from the dancing figures, with no cinematic shot changes, emotional close ups or dialogue to tell the story for him. It is all gestural., which allows each viewer to associate the characters with people of events personal to them. There is no fixed or definite meaning to the film. 

 

        It is stylistically as well as thematically different to his commercial work; the characters are simple, with few features and no facial expressions, yet incredibly well drawn and expressive through their movements, which are elegant, smooth and graceful. Despite the simplicity of the design, the animation is far from straightforward. As the characters dance together, not only does Woodward have to contend with capturing their spontaneity and the secondary motion of clothes and hair, he further complicates the project by having their limbs transform into wings or extend as though they have become swathes of fabric. The pace also alters, with one character freezing as the other continues to dance, while their bodies shift between weightlessness and reality. It is in these complex moments that Woodward's skills as an effects animator (he animated fluids for Warner Brothers) shine through.

 

        This animation is hypnotic, with the simplicity allowing you to focus of the beauty of the movements. That a colourless, line drawing can capture so much feeling and emotion demonstrates how well Woodward has recorded the complex motion and interaction between the two characters, and his skills at drawing figures.  

Do I Wanna Know- Arctic Monkeys

        When thinking about the way sound is used in animations, it is interesting to consider the use of animation in music videos. In this context, rather than being used as a tool to accentuate what the audience is looking at, it is the music which is at the centre, and the animation should work to emphasize that.

        One recent example which I think works well is Blinkink's video for the Arctic Monkey's song Do I Wanna Know? which (in some scenes at least) literally just animates the vocals and instruments of the track, showing white oscilloscope lines on a black background. As the song progresses, multiple sound waves in different colours are used to represent harmonious vocals, before the lines distort into characters, cars and other moving figures. Yet the song is rooted by its strong bassline, and consequently the animation always returns to the pulsating oscilloscope, and there is always the sense that any shapes and figures that we may see are drawn out of the line of sound waves.

        What stands out to me about this partnership of music and animation is that the animation is constructed so sharply around the beats of the music. While viewing examples of animations which visualise sound, I was irritated by Walter Ruttmann's Lichtspiel Opus 1 as there seemed to be little or no correlation between the sound and the visuals; the shapes may have reflected the tone of the instruments, but in my mind they just didn't seem to respond to the rhythm of the orchestral music. Blinkink's animation, on the other hand, has a strong sense of musicality, with the figures' movements corresponding exactly with bass and drum beats.