Oxfam International Women’s Day video

Here’s a video Louis designed, animated and directed for Oxfam’s International Women’s Day. It was commissioned by Infinite Wisdom Productions who produced the script written by Matt & Vince. Chris Warren assisted with the animation.

The existing branding heavily uses silhouetted icons, so silhouetted characters made sense in terms of style and turnaround speed. The tapered character designs and painterly stamp textures helped give the video the elegance and dignity it needed. I also made sure to shoehorn in a few character animation techniques to give a little sparkle to the movement and acting.

Everything had to be turned around in about three weeks over Christmas, but I think we managed to make the limited style and schedule work to our advantage.

In preparation, I looked closer at Saul Bass‘s work and was pleasantly surprised by the strength of the line based character in his title sequence in It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Graphical animation usually needs to chuck out some real-world physics to accomodate the abstract imagery, which can clash with the mechanics of comic acting.

Here’s some stills from the title sequence of  It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World: